New York: TikTok gave children placebo safety controls

New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges in an amended lawsuit that TikTok secretly tested nonfunctional versions of its Algo Refresh tool on users in 2022–2023 and withheld an algorithmic protection from roughly 10% of U.S. users, about 15 million people, including teenagers.

• Over 63,000 users received a nonfunctional Algo Refresh in three 2023 experiments
• In early 2022 the harmful-content protection was withheld from about 15 million U.S. users
• 16-year-old Chase Nasca of Long Island was placed in the control group and died on February 18, 2022
• An internal review found the protection did not apply to his account "by design"