A lawsuit has been filed against the TikTok platform in California following the deaths of two girls who participated in the "Blackout Challenge," which encourages users to choke themselves until they lose consciousness. The lawsuit, filed in a Los Angeles court last week, accuses TikTok's algorithm of "intentionally and repeatedly" promoting videos of the blackout challenge, which resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl in Texas and another girl, aged 9, in Wisconsin last year.
Matthew Bergman, a lawyer from the Social Media Victims Law Center who filed the lawsuit against TikTok, stated that the platform "must take responsibility for publishing content that contributed to the deaths of these two young girls."
He continued, saying that "TikTok has invested billions of dollars to deliberately design algorithms that promote dangerous content, fully aware of its dangers and the potential to cause the deaths of its users." TikTok, owned by the China-based company ByteDance, has not responded to attempts for comment.
The lawsuit claims that TikTok's algorithm promoted videos of the blackout challenge to both girls who died after choking themselves, with one using a rope while the other used a dog collar. Several child deaths in Italy, Australia, and other countries have been recorded as linked to the blackout challenge. TikTok promotes a variety of challenges, which often involve users recording themselves performing certain actions that can be very dangerous. Among these challenges, the court documents referenced the "Skull Breaker Challenge," where two people kick the legs of a third individual while they jump, causing them to fall. The documents also mentioned the "Corona Virus Challenge," which involved licking random objects and surfaces in public during the pandemic, as well as the "Fire Challenge," in which a person dips objects in a flammable liquid causing them to catch fire.
The lawsuit requests the judge to order TikTok to stop linking children to its algorithm and promoting dangerous challenges, as well as to pay damages in unspecified amounts.
