TikTok gave kids a placebo safety tool in secret experiment, New York lawsuit says

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Unsealed court documents in a lawsuit brought by New York state allege that TikTok subjected thousands of account holders attempting to enable a safety setting to placebo versions of the tool that did not actually work.

During these "ghost" or placebo tests, the social media platform targeted thousands of individuals, among them teenagers and children.

These account holders had chosen to activate safety controls such as "Algo Refresh," a setting designed to reset content recommendations for those seeking to remove unwanted or hazardous material.

While users believed the tool was working, their feeds remained unchanged, unlike those provided with the fully functional version, according to the suit.

The newly disclosed allegations form part of legal action led by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

It is one of more than two dozen state lawsuits charging TikTok with engineering its platform to foster addiction among children and misleading the public regarding safety measures.

Numerous filings across these state cases have remained sealed or heavily redacted following efforts by TikTok to conceal operational details from public view.

Legal filings contend that while TikTok publicly asserts safety is a paramount concern and that the application is suitable for young people, it deliberately blocked certain groups from accessing safety tools—even when users explicitly sought to avoid harmful content.

A spokesperson for TikTok stated: "We continuously make improvements to our platform which means that, like most companies, we regularly test new products and features to validate the experience and understand how they work in the real world."

In court filings, the platform has largely rejected the claims made by New York, maintaining that protecting younger users remains a core focus.

In September, the company resolved the first state lawsuit scheduled for trial, consenting to pay up to $300 million to Alabama and modify platform features for teenagers in that state.

James, a Democrat, first filed suit in 2024. Details regarding the placebo tests were added to an updated, sealed version of New York’s filing in late August before a judge subsequently ordered its release.

Internal records cited in the suit indicate that a Digital Well Being product manager at TikTok warned against running placebo tests on the Algo Refresh tool, raising concerns that the practice was problematic and likely to mislead account holders.

According to the lawsuit, the employee expressed in an internal message: "This feature is about algorithm transparency and control. A placebo group completely conflicts with that."

Despite these internal warnings, TikTok repeatedly ran the experiments on thousands of users throughout 2023. The lawsuit claims the company compared users deprived of the working feature against those who received it to analyze platform engagement times and the resulting influence on advertising revenue.

New York further claims that TikTok deceived the public regarding "Algo Refresh," informing users that it would reset their recommendation algorithm when the effect was merely temporary. The TikTok spokesperson maintained that these claims mischaracterize how "Algo Refresh" works.

Additionally, the unsealed documents describe another set of tests, originally reported by Bloomberg, in which TikTok randomly disabled safety settings designed to restrict exposure to dangerous material. Bloomberg reported that a teenage boy in New York included in the trial committed suicide after being served material related to self-harm and suicide.

Internal assessments later revealed that the teenager had been presented with an "onslaught" of material concerning suicide and self-harm, according to the court filing.

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