Texas judge rules TikTok misled users on child safety feature

It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features.

I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative.

I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.

> Liu also said Texas had established that TikTok's "Restricted Mode" did not work as advertised and exposed minors to content the company said would be filtered out.

I don't use tiktok, can someone explain what the restrict mode was advertised as vs does? If it's like any social media limiter it's perhaps a softer thing (time limit) than a hard thing (ie, designed to put the onus on the user).

TikTok isn't even safe for adults, let alone children.

Texas judge rules heroin marketed as child safe so parents could get back to doing their own heroin was not child safe after all.

Seems like that would be contrary to the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Why would anyone expect a data-funnel to the CCP to be honest? I am baffled that people even use the app.

> TikTok in August agreed to settle three U.S. lawsuits brought by young people who accuse social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive and harming their mental health.

I am so happy I do not live in US where an idiot harms themself and non-idiot has to pay them.

There's only 3 options for the internet:

1. free for all

2. locked down with ID checked age gates

3. sanitized with no adult content at all

If we put responsibility for keeping kids safe on companies we will get 2 or 3. The only good option is that parents need to actually parent their kids.