The state of Arkansas sued TikTok and Facebook parent Meta on Tuesday, claiming the social media companies were misleading consumers about the safety of children on their platforms and protections of users' private data.
The state filed two lawsuits against TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance and a third lawsuit against Meta, which also owns Instagram, accusing the companies of violating the state's deceptive trade practices act.
“TikTok is a wolf in sheep's clothing,” one of the lawsuits, filed in state court, said. “As long as TikTok is permitted to deceive and mislead Arkansas consumers about the risks to their data, those consumers and their privacy are easy prey.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin, both Republicans, announced the lawsuit as TikTok faces growing questions about the safety of its users' data. Both the FBI and officials at the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China's authoritarian government.
One of Sanders' first moves after she was sworn in as Arkansas' governor in January was to sign an executive order banning TikTok from state devices.
One of the lawsuits claims that TikTok isn't taking proper steps to protect minors who use the platform from inappropriate content, including sexual content and material depicting drug or alcohol use. TikTok did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment Tuesday.
“We have watched over the past decade as one social media company after another has exploited our kids for profit and escaped government oversight,” Sanders said in a statement released by her office. "My administration will not tolerate that failed status quo.”
The lawsuit against Meta accuses the company of manipulating Facebook to maximize the amount of time that young people spend on the platform, which it says has helped fuel mental health problems among the state's youth.
Meta on Tuesday outlined steps it has taken to protect teens on its platforms, including age- verification technology and technology that finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders.
“These are complex issues, but we will continue working with parents, experts and regulators such as the state attorneys general to develop new tools, features and policies that meet the needs of teens and their families,” Antigone Davis, Meta's head of safety, said in a statement.
Indiana last year filed a similar lawsuit against TikTok, claiming the video-sharing platform misleads its users, particularly children, about the level of inappropriate content and security of consumer information. Seattle's public school district in January also sued the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.
Sanders is also backing a bill advancing in the Arkansas Legislature that would require parental permission for anyone under 18 to use a social media site. The proposal, which a Senate panel endorsed on Tuesday, would require social media sites to verify a user's age.
After the Chicago teachers union voted to work remotely due to what they say is a lack of safety protocols amid the COVID-19 surge, the school system canceled classes on Wednesday, citing harm that remote learning has done to the city's children. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Cheddar to discuss the issues surrounding the latest dispute between educators and schools. She said that the return to in-person learning would likely be halted until more COVID tests could be provided for districts. "This is a terrible situation for everybody, and we need the testing, and we need the masks," she said. "It's the omicron surge that has created this disruption, and we are trying to do the best we can. And this is the only school district that has this kind of action right now." The teachers might not be returning to their schools for at least two weeks amid the ongoing tensions.
Illinois State Senator Robert Martwick joins Cheddar News to discuss the new bill he co-sponsored allowing students in the state to take 5 mental health days without a doctor's note.
On Monday, President Biden announced his new plan to take on inflation by taking down the big meat monopolies - turning to the federal government's antitrust authorities to investigate the major meatpackers that control a significant share of the market. The White House plans to devote one billion dollars to aiding independent meat and poultry producers in an effort to undercut the few powerful meat producers that have control of the sector. Austin Frerick, deputy director of Thurman Arnold Project at Yale, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
As the pandemic drags on, so does the widespread great resignation. In November alone, 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs, marking a new record high, and showing a 9 percent jump from the month prior. On the flip side, the number of people filing tax paperwork to start new businesses is surging, with over 430,000 new businesses launching in November. Rhett Buttle, the founder of Public Private Strategies and national business advisor to the Biden for President campaign, joined Wake Up with Cheddar to discuss.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is ramping up a civil investigation into The Trump Organization. The AG's office has subpoenaed Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. They have refused to comply with the subpoenas. Bradley Moss, national security attorney, joins Cheddar News to discuss the next steps in this investigation.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has officially reduced the 110-year prison sentence of truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos to 10 years, calling the initial lengthy sentence “unjust.” Dan Gilleon, constitutional attorney at Gilleon Law Firm APC, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Former Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams was sworn in as the newest Mayor of New York City. Adams is now expected to work on a number of issues such as crime and coronavirus. Erin Durkin,, reporter at PoliticoNY, joins Cheddar News to discuss more.
California's new composting law will affect what residents do in their kitchens. As of this week, Californians will have to recycle excess food in an effort to reduce emissions caused by food waste. Cities and counties will turn recycled food into compost or use it as a renewable energy source. California's new law is the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the country. Rachel Wagoner, Director of the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery called the law 'the biggest change to trash' since recycling started in the 1980s. She joined Cheddar Climate to discuss.
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
