Blackout Challenge – Families of dead girls sue TikTok. at

In the lawsuit, filed in a Los Angeles court on Tuesday, according to the Guardian, the parents allege that TikTok used its algorithm to “deliberately and repeatedly” push videos of the Blackout Challenge into children’s feeds to encourage them to participate. to the Motivate challenge where users are asked to choke themselves until they pass out.

“TikTok must be held accountable for distributing deadly content to these two young girls,” said attorney Matthew P. Bergman of the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC), which represents the families in court. SMVLC is a legal resource for parents of children who have been harmed by social media addiction and abuse. “TikTok has invested billions of dollars to intentionally create products that distribute dangerous content that the company knows is dangerous and could lead to user deaths,” Bergman said.

One victim, eight-year-old Lalani Erika Renee Walton of Temple, Texas, died on July 15, 2021, police said, “as a direct result of TikTok’s attempted ‘Blackout Challenge,'” according to the lawsuit. According to the report, she received a cell phone for her eighth birthday in April 2021 and “quickly became addicted to TikTok videos,” according to the lawsuit. She often posted videos of herself singing and dancing in hopes of becoming “TikTok famous.”

Girls saw no danger
In July 2021, her family noticed bruises on Lalani’s neck, but the girl dismissed it as an accident. What the parents didn’t know at the time was that Lalani had started competing in the Blackout Challenge, which had appeared on her feed weeks earlier. On the day of her death, Lalani had spent hours watching videos on a family trip, including posts about the challenge.

“She believed posting a video of her doing the blackout challenge would make her famous, so she decided to give it a try,” the indictment reads. “Lalani was eight years old at the time and didn’t realize or understand how dangerous what TikTok was asking her to do.”

The other victim named in the lawsuit, nine-year-old Arriani Jaileen Arroyo of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was given a smartphone at age seven and used TikTok multiple times a day, according to the lawsuit. She is said to be “gradually obsessed” with posting dance videos and “addicted” to the app.

When her family asked her about the fatal outcome of a TikTok challenge, the girl assured in January 2021 that she would never participate in such dangerous challenges. Just a month later, on February 26, she was found unconscious by her five-year-old brother. She was taken to a local hospital where the ventilator was eventually removed, the Guardian reported.

profit over health
“TikTok undoubtedly knew that the deadly blackout challenge spread through its app and that the algorithm specifically fed the blackout challenge to children, including those who had died,” the lawsuit reads. “TikTok prioritized higher corporate profits over the health and safety of its users, and in particular the health and safety of vulnerable children who TikTok knew or should have known were actively using its social media product,” the SMVLC claims. .

Families demand compensation
The families of the two girls are therefore seeking unspecified damages and have asked for a jury trial. TikTok initially declined to comment on the reason for the “Guardian”. It wasn’t until mid-May that the app denied responsibility after the death of a 10-year-old girl in the US state of Pennsylvania: “This disturbing ‘challenge’ that people seem to be learning from sources other than TikTok existed long before our platform and was never a TikTok. trend,” a company spokesperson said at the time.