TikTok staff warned leadership of child safety failures for years

Depositions filed in federal court this March highlight a persistent gap between internal safety concerns and corporate action. Reagen Maher, who managed safety and investigations from 2021 to 2024, testified that she personally flagged the issue of minors stripping on the platform’s Live feature in exchange for virtual gifts to then-CEO V Pappas. Maher noted that leadership was aware of these exploitation risks long before public reports surfaced, yet she struggled to convince senior figures that the harms were severe enough to warrant an urgent overhaul.

These testimonies form part of a broader multi-district litigation initiated in 2022, which groups hundreds of lawsuits against major social media companies including Meta, Snap, and Google. Former head of safety Eric Han also weighed in, detailing his 2020 concerns regarding algorithmic rabbit holes. Han described these features as having a contagion effect, specifically citing their role in amplifying suicidal ideation among users. The records portray a culture where internal experts identified clear safety risks, only to find their recommendations stalled by executive inaction.