Griffin: ‘[T]heir success cannot come at the expense of Arkansas’s youth’

LITTLE ROCK – Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin today announced that Griffin has filed three separate lawsuits against social media companies in Arkansas courts – one lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and two lawsuits against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance. Following the filing of the lawsuits, Sanders issued the following statement:

“We have to hold Big Tech companies accountable for pushing addictive platforms on our kids and exposing them to a world of inappropriate, damaging content. Arkansas is leading the charge on filing three lawsuits against TikTok and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram. These actions are a long time coming. We have watched over the past decade as one social media company after another has exploited our kids for profit and escaped government oversight. My administration will not tolerate that failed status quo.”

Griffin added:

“The common theme of the three lawsuits filed today is deception, deception that endangers Arkansans, especially our children. First, I filed a lawsuit against Meta to hold them accountable for their disregard of our children’s welfare. Meta has publicly misled consumers about the addictive nature of their products. Specifically, they intentionally employ algorithms that are addictive to adolescents and are rewiring how our children think, feel and behave. Instead of communicating the nature of these algorithms to the public, they actively conceal the nature of their products in pursuit of profits and growth. In testimony under oath in front of the Congress of the United States, they expressly denied the impacts that their products have on minors. We are holding Meta accountable for targeting our youth and deceiving the public about it. We are sending Silicon Valley a clear message that their success cannot come at the expense of Arkansas’s youth.

“Second, I filed two lawsuits against TikTok and ByteDance, collectively: The first lawsuit targets TikTok and ByteDance for misleading the public about the availability of adult content to teenage users. Specifically, they market their app as appropriate for teenage users while offering an abundance of posts that contain mature themes, nudity and drugs, all of which is readily available to minors. The second lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance targets their false claim that Arkansans’ user data is not accessible by the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

“TikTok is deceiving the public regarding the harmful content it is putting in the hands of our kids, and it is deceiving the public about its ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Protecting Arkansas’s youth is my highest calling, and I look forward to the fight.”

To read the lawsuit against Meta, click here.

To read the first lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance, click here.

To read the second lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance, click here.

About Attorney General Tim Griffin

Tim Griffin was elected Attorney General of Arkansas on November 8, 2022. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas on November 4, 2014, and was re-elected for his second four-year term on November 6, 2018. From 2011-2015, Griffin served as the 24th Representative of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District. For the 113th Congress, he was a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means while also serving as a Deputy Whip for the Majority. In the 112th Congress, he served as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Griffin is a graduate of Magnolia High School, Hendrix College in Conway and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He also attended graduate school at Oxford University. Griffin has served as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps, for over 25 years and currently holds the rank of colonel. In 2005, Griffin was mobilized to active duty as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and served with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault in Mosul, Iraq). He is currently serving as the Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) for the 81st Readiness Division at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Prior to his current post, Griffin served as the Commander of the 134th Legal Operations Detachment (LOD) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and a senior legislative advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at the Pentagon. Colonel Griffin holds a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He also served as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs for President George W. Bush. Griffin lives in Little Rock with his wife, Elizabeth, a Camden native, and their three children.

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