Alabama Attorney General Announces Historic Settlement with TikTok

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced a landmark settlement involving social media platform TikTok Inc. “Under the settlement, Alabama will receive a minimum of $100 million, due to the state within 45 days, with the potential to receive up to $300 million if certain conditions are met,” the press release said.

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The settlement also requires TikTok to implement a range of safety measures to protect children who use the platform. The agreement addresses Alabama’s claims that TikTok incorporated addictive features into its platform, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental health risks, and misled the public about the safety of its platforms, among other claims.

"This is a great day for Alabama parents. Tonight, they can rest easier knowing real protections are in place to shield their children from the dangers of social media addiction. TikTok has agreed to give parents real control over what their kids see and how much time they spend on the app,” said Marshall. “We've said from day one that our number one goal was to stand up for Alabamians when they are being harmed, and today, we did exactly that.”

The settlement requires TikTok to implement a series of safety features, including:

• A two-hour daily time limit, with parental controls that allow parents to further limit the amount of time their children spend on TikTok.
• “Productive pauses” that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 and 90 minutes to limit endless scrolling.
• “Nighttime access” that restricts children’s access from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., plus restrictions on messaging and push notifications overnight and during school hours.
• Robust age assurance measures to more effectively verify the age of young users.
• Stronger content moderation provisions, including limits on discoverability of teen accounts by adults and parental notification of suspicious interactions between teen users and adults.
• A blanket prohibition on the use of cosmetic filters by teen users.
• A default non-personalized feed for teen users.
• Stronger, more user-friendly parental controls.

Alabama’s agreement with TikTok makes the first settlement of its kind in the nation, resolving a case that was set to go to trial Monday. Alabama would have been the first state to bring its claims against TikTok to trial.

The attorney general’s office said the settlement “marks the latest victory in Attorney General Marshall’s efforts to hold technology companies and social media platforms accountable for putting Alabama consumers, particularly children, at risk.”