The SearchVoat Forum

...“TikTok unquestionably knew that the deadly Blackout Challenge was spreading through their app and that their algorithm was specifically feeding the Blackout Challenge to children,” the Social Media Victims Law Center’s complaint said, adding that the company “knew or should have known that failing to take immediate and significant action to extinguish the spread of the deadly Blackout Challenge would result in more injuries and deaths, especially among children.”...

An "unreasonably dangerous social media product ... that is designed to addict young children and does so, that affirmatively directs them in harm's way, is not immunized third-party content but rather volitional conduct on behalf of the social media companies," said Matthew Bergman, the attorney who founded the firm.

Or, as the complaint said: The plaintiffs “are not alleging that TikTok is liable for what third parties said or did, but for what TikTok did or did not do.”

In large part the suits do this by criticizing TikTok’s algorithm as addictive, with a slot machine-like interface that feeds users an endless, tailor-made stream of videos in hopes of keeping them online for longer and longer periods.

“TikTok designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold a social media product that was unreasonably dangerous because it was designed to be addictive to the minor users,” the complaint said, adding that the videos that were served to users include “harmful and exploitative” ones. “TikTok had a duty to monitor and evaluate the performance of its algorithm and ensure that it was not directing vulnerable children to dangerous and deadly videos.”