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The viral video phenomenon TikTok is being sued in California ever since children died while participating in a “Blackout Challenge,” which makes choking oneself until passing out a sport.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles state court last week, accuses TikTok software of “intentionally and repeatedly” promoting the Blackout Challenge, which resulted in the deaths of a 8 girl in Texas and a nine-year-old girl in Wisconsin last year. “TikTok must be held accountable for exposing these two young girls to potentially lethal content,” said Matthew Bergman, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, which filed suit.
“TikTok has invested billions of dollars to purposefully design products that push risk to health and safety that it is aware is dangerous and can result in deaths.”
TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
According to the lawsuit, TikTok’s algorithm elevated the Blackout Challenge to every one of the girls, who died by self-strangulation – one with a rope and the other with a dog leash.
It also named children from Italy, Australia, and other countries whose deaths were connected to the TikTok Blackout Challenge.
TikTok has featured and promoted a variety of challenges in which users film themselves performing themed and sometimes dangerous acts.
The “Skull Breaker Challenge,” in which individuals have their legs kicked out from under them while jumping, causes them to flip and hit their heads, was among the TikTok challenges described in court documents.
According to court documents, the “Coronavirus Challenge” entails licking random items and substrates in public during the pandemic, and the “Fire Challenge” entails dousing things with flammable liquid and setting them ablaze.
The lawsuit requests that a judge order TikTok to stop hooking children through its algorithm and boosting dangerous challenges, as well as pay unspecified monetary damages.
