TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that he filed a civil lawsuit against the social media company TikTok. <\/p>\n
His office filed a complaint earlier that morning.<\/p>\n
Uthmeier alleged that TikTok is violating its own guidelines by exposing underage children to explicit content, including pornographic material.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, predators, it\u2019s not just a white van driving in a neighborhood. That would almost be easier, we would see it, we got the best law enforcement in the country, they would get after it. Today it\u2019s happening in the privacy, in the dark corners of your child\u2019s bedroom,\u201d Uthmeier said.<\/p>\n
Under Florida House Bill 3,<\/a> passed 2 years ago, children under 14 are not allowed to be on social media apps. If social media apps find that users do not meet the age requirement, they are required to terminate these accounts. However, children aged 14-16 can access the apps if the platforms comply with certain guidelines and obtain parental consent.<\/p>\n Furthermore, a provision in the law states that if these agreements are knowingly or recklessly violated, then the Department of Legal Affairs is required to open a civil investigation against any social media platform.<\/p>\n This is not the first investigation that Uthmeier has opened against a social media app.<\/p>\n In December<\/a>, the AG opened up a criminal and civil action against the online gaming platform Roblox for exposing children to inappropriate content and lacking protections against predators on the app.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, he also opened up a criminal lawsuit <\/a>against OpenAI regarding the interactions that the alleged Florida State University shooter, Phoenix Ikner<\/a>, had with ChatGPT before the shooting occurred.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that he filed a civil lawsuit against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8232,128611,28,30,29,4260,833,3709],"class_list":["post-308023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-attorney-general","tag-child-safety-violations","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-james-uthmeier","tag-lawsuit","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}