(The Center Square) — Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced recently that the state filed a civil lawsuit against a social media app for the alleged harm it does to kids.
The lawsuit says MediaLab.Ai and its social media messaging app, Kik, are detrimental to children because of the platform's anonymous nature.
On Kik, people can talk to others anonymously without authenticating their identity.
The lawsuit states the app “positioned itself” as an app built for a teenage audience, with people not having to provide a phone number or email address to message on this app, the lawsuit notes.
After launching, Kik estimated that 40% of American teenagers used the platform, the lawsuit says.
Ford argued Kik became a “haven for child predators” due to the “anonymous nature of the accounts.”
Nevada’s legal case claims Kik was aware of the potential problem kids may face on its platform, but it did nothing to protect them. When MediaLab.Ai bought the social media in 2019, it also did not do anything to protect children from the harms that “were rampant on the Kik platform,” the lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, Kik says it is no longer a platform for teenagers by saying users need to be 18 or older. However, the lawsuit claims the social media app is not doing anything to check the ages of its users, which is “implicitly” courting a teenage audience.
“Defendants still fail to educate the public as to the dangers inherent to the Kik platform, and still allow children to be subject to harm on their platform,” the lawsuit says.
The defendants in the case “carefully created the impression that Kik was a safe platform where minors were unlikely to experience significant harm and where their safety was an important priority,” the lawsuit says. Despite this, it adds that this representation was “material, false and misleading.”
The lawsuit claims Kik is violating the Nevada Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which prohibits misleading business practices.
“Kik’s anonymity feature and low barrier to entry, among other things, harm Nevada’s youth,” Ford said. "The company’s actions and false claims of safety also put Nevada’s children in danger.”
“I will not allow companies to neglect their responsibilities to Nevada’s youth, and I will bring any offender that does so to court,” he added.
This lawsuit is not the first time Ford has brought legal action against a social media app. In June, Ford filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent companies, Google LLC and Alphabet Inc.
Additionally, Ford brought legal action against TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Facebook Messenger last year, according to a state government press release.
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