TikTok tries to dodge ‘addictive’ design claims in North Carolina

Filed 47m ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Alexander Nakarada · creatorchords.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Laima Gūtmane (simka… · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

TikTok and parent company ByteDance argued before North Carolina's Supreme Court that the state's lawsuit over allegedly addictive app design features, including autoplay and disappearing content, should be tossed for lack of jurisdiction. The state, represented by Special Deputy Attorney General Joshua Abram, argued ByteDance has millions of North Carolina user contracts and profits from geotargeted ads, comparing its in-state footprint favorably to Ford's, a company the Supreme Court has already found subject to state jurisdiction elsewhere.

TikTok's lawyer Jon Hacker countered that the company never tailored features or advertising specifically to North Carolina and is simply an internationally accessible platform that residents happen to use, arguing the state can't claim jurisdiction just because people there signed up. A lower business court judge already rejected a similar dismissal motion in August 2025, finding the app's local marketing and large teen user base amounted to active exploitation of the state's market.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A company that by its own lawyer's account has never gone out of its way to reach anyone in North Carolina somehow still has hundreds of thousands of teenagers there scrolling it. That's a neat trick if you can pull it off, showing up everywhere and nowhere at the same time depending on which room you're standing in. Courts tend to notice when a business wants all the market and none of the accountability that comes with having one.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Fast Feel Banana Peel · Alexander Nakarada · CC BY 4.0

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