A digital advertising company has been sued amid complaints that it bombarded children with violent ads promoting sex, dating, and vaping.
The lawsuit filed by San Diego County said it wants to stop AppLovin Corp. from “exposing children to graphic depictions of sex, violence, and sexual assault, delivered directly to their mobile devices through games designed for and rated as safe for children.”
“While parents do everything they can to protect their kids playing mobile games from harmful content, AppLovin strips away those digital safeguards and steers obscene advertisements to children anyway,” the suit said.
The company “disregards child safety tools to harvest children’s sensitive personal information — information precise enough to pinpoint where kids live, where they study, and whether they are sleeping — and feed it into the Company’s artificial intelligence advertising engine,” the lawsuit added.
San Diego County has filed a lawsuit against mobile advertising technology company AppLovin, alleging that it bypassed parental controls to serve ads for adult dating services, alcohol, vaping and graphic sexual content in games played by children https://t.co/D0T08ILIrd
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The suit alleged that the company “has turned child-friendly mobile games into a surveillance platform that tracks children and adults alike, monetizes their personal information, and deploys a deceptive user interface to mislead and coerce users into generating revenue for the Company.”
The lawsuit said the company uses “insidious features that expose children to obscene and inappropriate content, violate children’s privacy, and defraud advertisers.”
“The display of obscene material and violation of privacy rights occurs despite parents’ best efforts to protect their children, because AppLovin circumvents parental controls,” the lawsuit continued.
The lawsuit said technology “embedded within thousands of mobile games rated as suitable for children as young as four years old or rated ‘E for Everyone’ — systematically delivers advertisements depicting graphic sex acts, violent sexual assault, and other obscene material directly to children’s devices even when parental controls are fully enabled.”
Ad-Tech Under Fire: AppLovin Sued for Targeting Kids with Adult Ads
San Diego County is suing ad-tech platform AppLovin, alleging the company intentionally bypassed parental controls to serve explicit advertisements—including adult dating, alcohol, and graphic content—inside children’s mobile games. The lawsuit also claims AppLovin illegally harvested precise location and tracking data from minors’ devices to feed its AI advertising engine.
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The company “ignored the legal safeguards that exist to prevent precisely this sort of digital ‘fingerprinting’ from targeting children, and eliminated the technical mechanism that would allow its system, and the app developers that use it, to distinguish between adult and child users when collecting data,” the lawsuit said.
“Moreover, AppLovin ignores child safety measures implemented by Google and Apple, as well as privacy controls put in place by parents concerned for their children’s digital safety and wellbeing,” the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit said that ads for cannabis gummies, alcohol, and vaping products appeared in games designed for children.
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The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and a halt to AppLovin’s tactics.
San Diego County said the company’s actions violate California’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law, according to the New York Post.
“People should be able to trust the products they buy, the apps their kids use and the companies they deal with,” San Diego County Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer said.
“Families are already stretched thin by the cost of living. They should not also have to pay the price when companies mislead them, misuse their information or put their kids at risk,” Lawson-Remer added.
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