TikTok executives failed to act on internal child safety warnings, court records show

Depositions filed in federal court show that TikTok employees repeatedly warned senior leadership about dangers the platform posed to children — including sexual exploitation of minors and algorithmic exposure to suicide-related content — and grew frustrated when executives failed to act, according to court records obtained by NPR and reported by The Verge and TechCrunch.

What the depositions show

The previously unreported employee depositions were filed in March 2026 as part of multi-district litigation that began in 2022 and consolidates hundreds of lawsuits against TikTok, Meta, Snap and Google. The suits allege that the companies knew their platforms were harmful to children and failed to disclose those risks to young users and their families.

One deposition comes from Reagen Maher, who held senior safety and investigations positions at TikTok between 2021 and 2024. According to The Verge, Maher raised the prevalence of "transactional sexual content" directly with then-TikTok CEO V Pappas — specifically, minors stripping on TikTok's Live feature in exchange for virtual "gifts" that can be converted into real currency. Forbes reported on the practice in 2022, and Maher said the company was already aware of the sexual exploitation concerns before that article was published.

"I have been fighting about fixing this for months with people who didn't think the harms are severe enough," Maher wrote in an internal chat included in the deposition. "Put simply, senior leaders know about this issue."

A second deposition from Eric Han, TikTok's former head of safety, describes his concern in 2020 about algorithmic "rabbit holes," which he characterized in an internal report as having a "real contagion effect" on suicidal ideation and behavior. Han said he had flagged minor safety as an urgent issue that TikTok had to address, yet the company never warned parents about the potential dangers of their children using the platform.

Deliberate blind spots

TechCrunch, citing the same court documents, reports that employees warned minors were appearing in sexual content that was available for purchase on TikTok — raising internal concern that the company could profit from potentially illegal activity. Staff also flagged that minors were exploiting loopholes to access age-restricted content and to hide their activity from parents.

Perhaps the most consequential detail in the filings concerns what TikTok chose not to know. According to TechCrunch, the company did not conduct surveys to determine the age of its users, out of concern that the results would have to be shared with the Federal Trade Commission.

Regulatory and legal exposure

The disclosures arrive in the middle of sprawling litigation. Alongside Meta, Google and Snap, TikTok faces hundreds of consolidated lawsuits in federal court. TechCrunch notes that TikTok has already settled several cases before they reached trial, in litigation that has produced at least one jury verdict — in Los Angeles — finding that Meta and YouTube designed their platforms to be addictive to young users. TikTok did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment on the newly reported depositions.

Why it matters

Court records documenting internal knowledge of child safety harms — including a decision to avoid collecting age data specifically because the FTC might see it — change the legal picture for TikTok. Regulators and plaintiffs no longer have to argue the company should have known about the risks; sworn testimony suggests senior leaders up to the CEO were told directly and did not act. That evidence strengthens failure-to-warn claims in the multi-district litigation, invites closer FTC scrutiny of how TikTok handles minors on its platform, and adds momentum to broader pushes for age verification and platform design rules. It also makes further pre-trial settlements more likely, as the company weighs how this testimony would land before a jury.