State of Arkansas’ Lawsuit Against TikTok Continues in Court

Social Media,

The State of Arkansas’ lawsuit against social media giant TikTok is moving forward in Union County Circuit Court.

In March Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office filed a lawsuit against Chinese-based company ByteDance — the corporation that owns TikTok — alleging the social media platform violated Arkansas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Among other things, the lawsuit argues that TikTok failed to fully disclose that TikTok is subject to Chinese law — including “laws that mandate secret cooperation with intelligence activities of the People’s Republic of China.”

The lawsuit also alleges that TikTok “routinely exposes Arkansas consumers’ data, without their knowledge, to access and exploitation by the Chinese Government and Communist Party” and that “TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has admitted to using data gathered through TikTok to surveil Americans.”

With a billion users worldwide and 135 million in the U.S., TikTok is considered by some to be the most popular social media platform in the world.

The A.G.’s complaint against TikTok concludes by asking the court to stop TikTok’s actions and award the state up to $10,000 per violation of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act in accordance with state law.

You can read the entire complaint here.

This lawsuit between Arkansas and TikTok is separate from the larger lawsuit over Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act.

Act 689, the Social Media Safety Act of 2023 by Sen. Tyler Dees (R – Siloam Springs) and Rep. Jon Eubanks (R – Paris), is a good law that requires major social media companies to use age verification to ensure minors do not access social media platforms without parental consent. A social media company that violated the law could be held liable.

On June 29 the trade association NetChoice filed a lawsuit in federal court in Arkansas on behalf of its members — which include tech giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat, Pinterest, and TikTok.

The lawsuit alleges that Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act is unconstitutional and should be struck down. The ACLU has filed a brief opposing the Social Media Safety Act as part of that lawsuit as well.

Despite employing tens of thousands of content moderators, TikTok’s algorithm repeatedly has been shown to inundate teenagers with videos about eating disorders, body image, self-harm, and suicide. It’s good to see the State of Arkansas taking steps to stop TikTok from preying on children and prevent it from giving sensitive user data to the Chinese Communist Party.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Agencies Offer Women in Arkansas $60,000+ to Bear Children as Commercial Surrogates

Bioethics, Surrogacy,

Agencies are offering women in Arkansas tens of thousands of dollars to bear children as commercial surrogates.

Commercial surrogacy agencies work with individuals and couples who pay women to be artificially inseminated and bear children for them as surrogates.

The agency American Surrogacy advertises that women in Arkansas can make more than $60,000 as commercial surrogates. Other companies on Craigslist offer commercial surrogates upwards of $55,000 to $75,000.

The reality is that commercial surrogacy uses this kind of money to exploit women and children.

In California, surrogate Brittney Pearson recently made headlines after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Because the cancer treatment could harm the unborn baby she was carrying, doctors recommended inducing labor early and caring for the baby in the NICU while she started chemo. However, that isn’t what the same-sex couple paying Brittney Pearson as their commercial surrogate wanted.

Even though she was 24 weeks pregnant, and the baby might have been able to survive outside the womb, the men wanted Brittney to have an abortion. If the baby were born alive, the men asked that no life-saving measures be taken for the baby.

With her cancer having spread to her liver, Pearson found a hospital to induce birth. The child died shortly after being born on Father’s Day, June 18.

All of this was made possible by state laws that facilitate commercial surrogacy.

Family Council has lobbied for legislation that would prohibit commercial surrogacy in Arkansas.

In 2017 then-Rep. Greg Leding sponsored a bill prohibiting commercial surrogacy in Arkansas. Unfortunately, the bill never came up for a vote.

Being pro-life means believing that innocent human life is sacred at every stage of development from conception until natural death.

Commercial surrogacy violates the sanctity and dignity of human life, because it treats women like commodities, and it treats unborn children like property that can be manufactured, bought, sold, or destroyed at will.

To put it simply: People aren’t products.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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