Thousands of TikTok users who tried to switch on a key safety tool were instead enrolled in an experiment that gave them a version that did nothing, according to allegations laid out in newly unsealed court filings in New York.
New York’s lawsuit claims the platform ran so-called “ghost” or placebo tests, selecting thousands of users — including teens and children — who sought out protections such as “Algo Refresh”, a feature marketed as a way to reset video recommendations for people trying to break away from unwanted or potentially harmful content.
According to the complaint, those users were led to believe the tool had been activated, but their feeds did not change. The lawsuit contrasts that with other users who received a fully functioning version that did alter recommendations.
The allegations appear in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ case against TikTok, one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed by states accusing the company of building its product to hook children and of misleading the public about how safe the service is.
Across the country, many records in the state cases have remained sealed or heavily redacted after TikTok sought to keep details about its internal operations out of view.
The claims are part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against the social media company
The New York lawsuit says TikTok tells users that safety is a top priority and promotes the platform as suitable for kids and teens, while knowingly restricting access to certain safety tools for some groups — including users who specifically tried to limit exposure to unwanted or potentially harmful material.
“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 TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
TikTok has broadly rejected New York’s claims in court filings and has said it prioritises the safety of younger users.
In September, the company resolved the first state case scheduled for trial, agreeing to pay Alabama up to $300 million and to modify how the app works for teens in the state.
Ms James, a Democrat, first filed suit in 2024. The allegations about the testing were included in an updated version of the complaint submitted at the end of August under seal, and a judge later ordered those sections unsealed.
Employee flagged test
Inside the company, a product manager working on TikTok’s Digital Well Being team warned that placebo testing on Algo Refresh raised concerns and could be seen as misleading to users, the lawsuit alleges.
“This feature is about algorithm transparency and control,” the employee wrote in an internal chat, according to the filing.
“A placebo group completely conflicts with that.”
Despite that, the complaint alleges TikTok ran the experiments repeatedly in 2023 on thousands of users, comparing those who did not receive the feature with those who did, in order to measure how long people stayed on the app and what effect the tool had on advertising revenue.
The lawsuit further alleges TikTok misrepresented how Algo Refresh functioned, telling users it would reset the recommendation algorithm even though, the state claims, the change was only temporary.
The TikTok spokesperson said the lawsuit’s claims mischaracterise how Algo Refresh works.
Unsealed portions of the filing also describe another set of tests that had been previously reported by Bloomberg.
In those experiments, TikTok allegedly selected users at random and disabled safety settings that were designed to reduce exposure to harmful content.
Bloomberg reported that a teenage boy in New York who was included in the test later died by suicide after being shown content related to self-harm and suicide. The lawsuit says internal reviews found the boy had been served an “onslaught” of suicide and self-harm material.
