The complaint ramps up the pressure on TikTok and Chinese parent company ByteDance, which were already battling the US over a law that threatens to ban the company from the country.
In the filing, the US accused TikTok of implementing “deficient” ways of screening for accounts created by children and obstructing parents when they tried to delete them.
A review of 1,700 requests from parents to cancel accounts that were made between 2019 and 2020 found that 30% were still active in November 2021, according to the filing.
It said moderators charged with reviewing accounts flagged as underage were only authorised to act if they saw explicit admission of a child’s age, while being given limited access to user videos.
It said they typically had only a few seconds to make their decisions.
Officials asked the court to order a stop to TikTok’s actions and determine penalties for each violation.
“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children’s private information without any parental consent or control,” said principal deputy assistant attorney general Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
The lawsuit states the US government seeks “to put an end” to TikTok’s alleged “unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy”.
The company has faced fines in the UK and Europe over similar issues.
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