Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Newsmax on Monday that TikTok is violating several state laws as it is not doing enough to shield children from explicit content.
Paxton recently filed a lawsuit against the app, which is facing a potential shutdown by Sunday if it fails to find a buyer, for violating Texas' Deceptive Trade Practices Act and the Scope Act, designed to protect information about children.
TikTok is "claiming to be a safe site for children," Paxton said on "National Report." "That's clearly not true. If you go on, as a child, you can access explicit materials, inappropriate materials, violent materials, all kinds of things that they should not be able to access, especially since TikTok has said that children are protected on their site.
"It's just absolutely not true. We're arguing that is a deceptive trade practice, and they should be held responsible and they should stop doing it. And then they owe us damages."
The Texas Attorney General said TikTok has disregarded the health and safety of Texas children.
"TikTok is rife with profanity, sexual content, violence, mature themes, and drug and alcohol content," Paxton said. "We're not trying to shut TikTok down completely. All we want them to do is protect children.
"They said they're doing it, and we have state laws that our legislature passed because they care about these kids, and it's designed to protect children from this exact material. So if they're going to follow our state laws, we're happy to have them in Texas."
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Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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