Court Filings Detail Tiktok Staff Warnings On Child Safety
Employee depositions describe warnings about sexual exploitation, age restrictions and suicide-related content, as TikTok faces lawsuits over alleged harms to young users.
TikTok employees repeatedly raised concerns about risks to children, but were frustrated by executives’ responses, according to court records obtained by NPR and described by TechCrunch and The Verge. Depositions filed in federal court in March detail warnings about sexual exploitation, minors accessing restricted content and exposure to material related to suicide.
Table of Contents
Warnings about sexual content
According to The Verge, a deposition by Reagen Maher, who held senior safety and investigations roles at TikTok between 2021 and 2024, describes warnings about minors appearing in “transactional sexual content.” Maher raised the issue with then-CEO V Pappas, the outlet reports. One concern involved minors stripping on TikTok’s Live feature in exchange for gifts that could be converted into money.
The Verge says Maher described months of efforts to get the issue addressed and said senior leaders knew about it. An excerpt from an internal chat cited in the deposition also referred to projects underway to fix parts of the problem. TechCrunch reports that employees worried TikTok could profit from sexual content involving minors that might be illegal.
Age restrictions and other risks
Employees also flagged ways minors could get around age restrictions and conceal their activity from parents, according to TechCrunch. The outlet says the court documents show TikTok did not survey users to establish their ages because of concern that it would then have to share the findings with the Federal Trade Commission.
In another deposition described by The Verge, former TikTok head of safety Eric Han said he had raised concerns in 2020 about the platform’s algorithm leading users toward harmful content. An internal report he discussed linked such patterns to suicidal thoughts and behavior. Han said TikTok did not warn parents about the potential dangers to children using the platform, despite his view that minor safety required urgent attention.
The litigation context
The depositions are part of federal litigation that brings together hundreds of lawsuits against TikTok, Meta, Snap and Google, The Verge reports. The cases allege that the companies knew their platforms posed risks to children and failed to disclose them. Those are allegations in the lawsuits, not findings established by the depositions.
TechCrunch reports that TikTok has settled several cases before trial. TikTok did not immediately respond to that outlet’s request for comment on the newly reported records.
Sources
This story was compiled by AI from the reports below. Read the originals for the full details.