A Texas judge has ruled that TikTok violated the state’s consumer protection laws by misleading users about its measures to protect children from harmful content.
The ruling, stemming from a lawsuit filed by Texas in January last year, made Texas the first state in the nation to hold the social media platform liable for lying about its safety feature.
The state had argued that TikTok claimed it would remove content violating its community guidelines, such as those depicting drugs, nudity, alcohol, injuries, and profanity, according to the ruling.
However, state prosecutors said the company’s internal content-moderation policies allowed such content to remain accessible to minors under the designation “hard to find” rather than “do not allow.”…