TikTok’s internal documents, submitted in court for a multi-state investigation into the app, accidently became public this week, revealing that the authorities knew about the potential danger and harm the app was posing on American teens.
The shocking algorithm details became public when the reporters for Kentucky Public Radio found out that the redacted portions of the lawsuit, which were supposed to stay hidden, can be unredacted when copied and pasted into a new text file, as per NPR’s Friday report.
TikTok’s internal files revealed that the officials at the app’s parent company ByteDance talking about the internal studies that disclosed how the app can be a threat to children.
The documents show that TikTok can become an addiction to young users after they end up viewing 260 videos, that comprise of 8 seconds each, making 35 minutes altogether.
Just 35 minutes usage of the app is enough to addict the users to it, as per Kentucky’s authorities.
The newly revealed documents also exposed that prolong use of the app "correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety."
"Redacting documents is fairly difficult. Very often what you have is people just putting black bars in PDFs, or black text, but the text still remains,” said Adam Wandt, an associate professor and deputy chair for technology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, to Business Insider.
The lawsuit also alleged that TikTok is misleading the public by stating that it moderates content on the platform as it gives special favor to the creators who are considered “high value” by neglecting their policy violating content.
