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TikTok gave teens and children access to a placebo safety feature instead of a real one that would have let them refresh their recommendations in an experiment, according to allegations in New York\u2019s lawsuit against the social media platform.<\/p>\n
Reuters<\/a> reports that TikTok\u2019s experiments involved thousands of users, including teens and children, who had opted to use safety features like \u201cAlgo Refresh,\u201d a tool that allows users to reset their recommendations and stop seeing unwanted or potentially harmful content. <\/p>\n Although the users believed that they had activated the feature, their feeds didn\u2019t change, unlike those of users who weren\u2019t part of the experiment and had access to a fully functioning version of the tool.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s lawsuit against the company is one of more than two dozen cases brought by states that accuse the social media giant of designing its platform to encourage addictive use among children and misleading users about its safety.<\/p>\n \u201cWe continuously make improvements to our platform which means that, like most companies, we regularly test new products and features to validate the \u200bexperience and understand how they work in the real world,\u201d TikTok told told Reuters.<\/p>\n TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n The lawsuit also claims that TikTok conducted other experiments. Bloomberg<\/a> reported in June that one such experiment<\/a> withheld a safety feature from 15 million U.S. users, including a teenager who later died by suicide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n