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Lawsuit: TikTok Allegedly Gave Teens Fake 'Ghost' Safety Tool

Did TikTok betray parents by secretly disabling safety tools or is it genuinely committed to protecting young users?

3 hours ago·Updated 1 hour ago

Lawsuit: TikTok Allegedly Gave Teens Fake 'Ghost' Safety Tool

Story

Above: TikTok signage outside its Culver City, California, headquarters on Jan. 27. Image credit: Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The Facts

Court records unsealed on Wednesday in New York's lawsuit against TikTok accuse the social media company of giving thousands of users, including minors, non-functional "ghost" versions of a safety tool they tried to activate, leaving their feeds unchanged.
New York State Courts
Independent
The Straits Times
The amended complaint cites an internal message from a TikTok product manager for Digital Well Being objecting to placebo testing of the Algo Refresh tool, writing that it would conflict with the feature's core focus on "algorithm transparency and control."
New York State Courts
TikTok launched its refresh tool in March 2023, promising that the feature would enable users to reset their For You Page as if they had just joined the platform, while keeping any settings they had made to enable or impact accounts they followed.
TikTok Newsroom
New York State Courts
However, according to the complaint, TikTok placed more than 19,000 users in a placebo group before Algo Refresh launched, then over 28,000 in April 2023 and more than 16,000 in May 2023, while measuring the effects on time spent in the app and ad revenue.
New York State Courts
The suit also references a separate experiment uncovered by Bloomberg Businessweek, in which TikTok withheld a feature designed to break up streams of negative content from around 10% of U.S. users, including 16-year-old Chase Nasca, who subsequently committed suicide in February 2022.
New York State Courts
Bloomberg
Bloomberg
The new allegations build on a suit that New York Attorney General Letitia James first filed in October 2024 alongside 13 other attorneys general. A motion to dismiss the case was later denied in May 2025 by New York State Supreme Court Judge Anar Rathod Patel.
New York State Attorney General
New York State Attorney General

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The Spin

Industry-critical narrative

TikTok's quiet experimentation with safety tools is an appalling breach of trust. Despite selling these tools to parents, TikTok fraudulently switched them off to prioritize engagement metrics instead of protecting young users from online harms. Given these actions, TikTok can't be trusted to redesign its app safely without the courts and financial penalties pushing it to.

New York State Attorney General

New York State Courts

Pro-industry narrative

TikTok considers its users' safety its top priority. As a result, the company has implemented a suite of measures, including age-gating, stricter default privacy for young users and a separate under-13 experience, to help teenagers and children safely enjoy the platform. Paired with an active approach to mental health, these demonstrate TikTok's iron-clad commitment to safety.

TikTok