A report from Kentucky Public Radio first detailed that the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office was attempting to redact court documents related to the state’s lawsuit against TikTok.
Kentucky Public Radio Editor-in-Chief Ryan Van Velzer sat down with Capitol Hill reporter Sylvia Goodman to discuss her reporting and subsequent actions by TikTok and the Attorney General’s Office.
Van Velzer: A whirlwind broke out. What started as a daily report became an international scoop. So start from the beginning. How did you find this story?
Goodman: Well, it actually started with Joe Csonka, an amazing reporter at Enterprise Capitol. He pointed me to this lawsuit and learned that it would be filed in Scott County. This is a bit unusual, but I didn’t think it would be a big story.
So there were apparently 13 lawsuits filed in other states based on basically the same information. So there was no shortage of reports already out there, but when I started reading them, I found the breadth of these compilations odd. And there are a few things I try every time to make my editing a success.
To be honest, the first thing that worked for me was copy and paste. I copied and pasted it all into a new document and was able to read everything that was edited.
Van Velzer: What did those compilations reveal?
Goodman: I mean, really, what didn’t they reveal? We went through pages and pages of redacted information, and to be honest, I had my jaw on the floor reading the beginning of this article. The attorney general cited an anonymous executive as saying that algorithms may be robbing children of opportunities to quote, sleep, eat, move around the room, look into someone’s eyes, etc. he said.
There’s also evidence that TikTok knew how addictive its platform was. An internal study found that it takes just 260 videos to form a long-lasting habit. Other documents show TikTok employees admitting to compulsive use of the app and the negative effects it can cause.
NPR received a statement from a TikTok spokesperson saying the company has robust safety measures in place, including proactively removing users suspected of being underage and including safety features such as default screen time limits. He stated that he is taking the following measures.
Van Velzer: Can you tell us about what you learned from the news reports about it?
goodman: Yeah, and some of those safeguards are the direct subject of litigation. The article points out that TikTok did not actually hope to significantly shorten usage time through time limits, and that the success of the tool is not based on its effectiveness, but on how much society trusts it. It cites several internal documents showing that it was measured using criteria such as whether the company improved its performance. Reduce screen time. And according to court filings, TikTok’s experiment with screen time usage prompts, which it officially calls restrictions, reduced the average amount of time teens spend on the platform per day from 108.5 minutes to about 107 minutes. . A minute and a half difference.
Van Velzer: And this lawsuit also targeted content moderation in apps, right?
Goodman: Yes, basically, based on TikTok’s documentation, they claimed that moderation was not completely effective at flagging or actually removing content that violated community guidelines. Another target was a beauty filter that uses artificial intelligence to rework a person’s face. I think many of us are familiar with these. Internal documents appear to indicate that TikTok was aware of the harmfulness of these filters.
The document also revealed that TikTok’s algorithm appears to actively prioritize beautiful people. The attorney general claimed the documents showed the company was trying to promote narrow beauty norms that were harmful to young people. The Attorney General’s Office took action after we reported some of the redacted information.
He filed a motion with the court to have the document sealed. I found and reported this public document before Coleman took such action, and I will continue to report it. Coleman’s motion states that the office has a non-disclosure agreement with TikTok regarding its responses to us, and TikTok said it would be “highly irresponsible” for NPR to release this information. Ta.
