TikTok allegedly used 'Placebo' safety tools on teens in engagement experiments, lawsuit claims
Unsealed court documents reveal secret testing that denied functional protections to young users to measure Ad revenue
According to recent lawsuit in New York, TikTok ran an experiment on thousands of users who tried to turn on a safety feature on the platform.
As reported, the short-video platform ran secret "ghost" and "placebo" experiments on thousands of children and teenagers, providing them with non-functional versions of safety tools while tracking how it affected their app usage and ad revenue.
According to newly unsealed allegations in a lawsuit filed by New York State, TikTok tested features like "Algo Refresh"— a tool designed to reset recommendations for users seeking to escape unwanted or potentially harmful content.
The tool was marketed as a way to reset recommendation feeds—by giving some young users a fake version that offered no actual algorithmic change.
Internal communications cited in the complaint show employees warned that withholding real safety controls to create a control group conflicted directly with user transparency, but the tests proceeded anyway.
Reuters, report the legal filing also points to separate tests where safety filters limiting exposure to harmful material were silently disabled for random users.
The lawsuit claims TikTok assures users that safety is a top priority and that its platform is appropriate for kids and teens, while knowingly preventing some groups of users from accessing certain safety tools, including users who had specifically sought to avoid unwanted or potentially harmful content.
"We continuously make improvements to our platform which means that, like most companies, we regularly test new products and features to validate the experience and understand how they work in the real world," TikTok' spokesperson said in a statement.
Owned by ByteDance the online short-video platform, TikTok has broadly disputed the claims, stating that its product testing aligns with standard corporate practices to validate user experiences.
The company has broadly denied New York's allegations in court filings and has said that keeping young users safe is a priority.
In September, TikTok settled the first state lawsuit set for trial.
