TikTok ran a placebo safety tool on thousands of users over a staffer's objection, New York alleges

The most consequential passage in New York's amended complaint is two sentences a TikTok product manager for Digital Well Being typed into an internal chat. "This feature is about algorithm transparency and control," the person wrote, according to the lawsuit. "A placebo group completely conflicts with that." ^[3] The same manager called placebo testing on Algo Refresh problematic and said users might find it misleading ^[4].

I think the chat matters more to the state's case than the experiment does. New York pleads that TikTok told users safety was a top priority and that the app was appropriate for children and teens while knowingly keeping safety tools from some of them, including users who had asked to avoid harmful content ^[14]. A placebo arm can be argued as an ordinary test. A written objection from the company's own well-being staff is evidence for the word "knowingly" ^[3].

The test design has a revenue line in it. Scoring a safety tool on time spent and ad revenue ^[5] asks whether a working version costs TikTok money, or rather how much. The complaint, as reported, does not say what the tests found.

TikTok's answer is that this is routine. "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," a spokesperson said ^[11]. The company has broadly denied the allegations in court filings and says keeping young users safe is a priority ^[12]. If a judge accepts that a placebo arm is standard product testing, the chat becomes one employee's dissent inside a normal process. The case would then narrow to whether TikTok described the feature accurately ^[6].

The only price on these cases so far comes from Alabama. In September TikTok agreed to pay that state up to $300 million and change how its platform works for teens there, settling the first state case set for trial ^[10]. New York's suit is one of more than two dozen ^[9]. At Alabama's ceiling, two dozen cases come to $7.2 billion, and the count is higher than two dozen ^[16]. Alabama is one state, and its price may not scale. The settlement does show that TikTok chose to pay before a jury heard its case. Many documents in the state cases have also been sealed or heavily redacted as the company sought to keep its operations from view ^[8].

The thesis here is that each unsealed document raises what TikTok pays to avoid trial. It is wrong if New York settles below Alabama's figure ^[10], or if TikTok takes the case to a jury on the testing defense and wins.

The safety-off experiment ^[13] had already reached Washington. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal called it "depraved" in August and sent TikTok 13 questions about how it was designed, who approved it and what safeguards it had, according to Cryptopolitan ^[15].