Bipartisan coalition of attorneys general seek court enforcement as TikTok fails to preserve and produce evidence in multistate investigation

October 8, 2024 (SAINT PAUL) — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and a bipartisan coalition of 21 other attorneys general urged a Tennessee court today to enforce its orders that require TikTok to comply with an ongoing multistate consumer protection investigation and to preserve and produce relevant evidence.

Attorney General Ellison and the bipartisan coalition began an investigation into TikTok in 2022 to determine whether TikTok is violating state consumer protection laws in ways that have fueled the ongoing crisis in the mental health of children and teens. Various states, including Minnesota, have issued requests for information related to TikTok’s business practices.

Last year when TikTok failed to produce the requested information, 46 states including Minnesota filed an amicus brief in support of Tennessee when it sought an enforcement action in state court to compel TikTok to comply with its requests. The court has twice ordered TikTok to produce responsive documents and witnesses for deposition, but TikTok has failed to fully comply with these orders.

The discovery that Tennessee is asking the court once again to compel from TikTok includes text message communications by TikTok’s executives and Trust & Safety Communications personnel, and information related to TikTok’s destruction of evidence relevant to the states’ consumer-protection investigation. This includes information related to chat deletions, such as the deletion of “Group Secure Chats” amongst TikTok’s employees on its chat application system called Lark.

The amicus brief that Attorney General Ellison and the bipartisan coalition filed today supports Tennessee’s continued efforts to compel TikTok’s compliance with the court’s order.

In the brief, Attorney General Ellison and the coalition assert that TikTok’s failure to preserve potentially relevant evidence and to produce information in a reasonably useable format is impeding the multistate investigation of TikTok. They emphasize that a resolution from the court is critical. Without it, corporations facing a consumer-protection investigation will increasingly be emboldened to destroy relevant evidence which will materially hinder states’ ability to protect their residents.

“TikTok’s failure to preserve and produce evidence, in defiance of a court order, is outrageous,” said Attorney General Ellison. “I am working closely with a bipartisan coalition of Attorneys General from across America to investigate TikTok because I am deeply concerned about the impact TikTok is having on the mental health of young people. Today, we are urging the court to once again compel essential discovery from TikTok. I will not be deterred in my work to protect the mental health and well-being of Minnesota’s youth.”

In parallel with the coalition’s amicus filing, 13 states and the District of Columbia also filed separate lawsuits in their states’ courts against TikTok today, alleging the social media giant has deceived the public about the safety of the app and has hooked children and youth on its product in violation of their states’ consumer-protection laws.

While these states pursue their litigation, Attorney General Ellison’s investigation of TikTok is ongoing. His Office recently issued a request for qualifications for outside counsel who can represent the Attorney General’s Office in litigation related to social media harm.

Joining Attorney General Ellison in today’s brief are the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Background on Attorney General Ellison’s work to protect young people online

This filing is the latest action taken by Attorney General Ellison to help safeguard the mental health of young people online. On October 24, 2023, Attorney General Ellison sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for violating state consumer protection laws by knowingly designing and deploying harmful features that purposefully addict children and teens. In the lawsuit, Attorney General Ellison alleges that Meta built features like infinite scroll and near-constant alerts to maximize the amount of time young people spent on their platforms, much to their detriment. The lawsuit is ongoing.

On February 1, 2024, Attorney General Ellison’s Office produced a report for the Minnesota legislature on the impact that emerging technologies like social media platforms and AI are having on young people. The report found that these technologies often have a negative effect on the well-being of young people, and that product design choices facilitate these harms. The report includes recommendations to help protect young people from the cyberbullying and harassment, disturbing graphic and sexual content, and manipulation and fraud they are routinely exposed to online. Recently, that report won a 2024 Notable Document Award from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Click here to read the full report.

The Minnesota legislature used the information in the report when drafting the Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act (HF 4400/SF 4696), which requires social media platforms to disclose key information about:

• how their algorithms account for user preference and quality of content, which is important because many algorithms prioritize sensational, untrue, or disturbing content over the clearly stated preferences of their users
• how they limit excessive account interactions, like fake accounts, bots, or kids spending too much screen time
• time-sensitive notifications to users and how platforms determine if something is time-sensitive, which is a tactic social media companies use to lure users back into their app
• all product experiments that have been conducted on 1,000 or more users, including a description of the experimental conditions and the results of the product experiment for all experimental conditions on users' viewing or engaging with content that:
  1. users indicate to be high or low quality;
  2. users indicate complies or does not comply with the users' expressed preferences;
  3. violates platform policies.

The Act goes into effect on July 1, 2025. If a social media platform fails to disclose any of that information, the Act empowers the Attorney General’s Office to enforce compliance.

Attorney General Ellison invites Minnesotans to share their stories about the harms caused by social media platforms with his Office using this online form. Consumers may also call the Attorney General’s Office at (651) 296-3353 (Metro area), (800) 657-3787 (Greater Minnesota), or (800) 627-3529 (Minnesota Relay).