AccomplishmentsBig Tech
Social Media: Connecticut families can’t wait for the federal government or Big Tech to protect our kids online. As a father of three, Attorney General Tong knows firsthand how harmful social media can be for kids, and how difficult it is for parents to manage these risks. Attorney General Tong has sued Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) alleging that the company knowingly designed and deployed harmful features on Instagram and its other social media platforms that purposefully addict youth. An investigation into TikTok over similar allegations is active and ongoing.
He’s now seeking state legislation to further combat youth social media addiction, including prohibiting social media companies from exposing minors to harmful and addictive algorithms and notifications without parental consent.
Artificial Intelligence: Attorney General Tong has led bipartisan coalitions of attorneys general nationwide calling on industry and lawmakers to adopt strong safeguards to protect against AI abuses, including demanding that xAI, the company that owns both the X social media platform and the AI chatbot Grok, take additional action to prevent its chatbot from generating nonconsensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material. He’s helped lead a bipartisan multistate coalition to oppose federal efforts to ban state laws that address artificial intelligence.
Google: Attorney General Tong was part of a bipartisan, multistate coalition of attorneys general who sued Google in December 2020 to challenge the company’s illegal monopoly over search engines. That resulted in a landmark decision in 2024 that the company had indeed abused its monopoly power and harmed consumers, and court imposed measures to restore fair competition. This follows two major settlements with Google in 2023, including a $700 million multistate settlement with direct compensation for consumers and sweeping marketplace reforms to restore fair competition in the Google Play Store, and a $391.5 million settlement over the company’s location tracking practices.
Fighting Disinformation: During the COVID pandemic and after, Attorney General Tong was a leading voice amongst state attorneys general fighting anti-vax disinformation online. He led coalitions of attorneys general pushing Facebook and Twitter to enforce their own pandemic and anti-vaccine disinformation policies.
Your right to privacy: Connecticut has some of the strongest data privacy laws on the books, and Attorney General Tong has fought to make sure those laws keep pace with evolving technology. Attorney General Tong successfully fought for legislation to give Connecticut residents the right to access, correct, and delete personal data stored and collected by businesses, and the right to opt-out of the sale of personal data and targeted advertising.
When businesses have failed to protect personal data, Attorney General Tong has taken strong actions to hold companies accountable. That includes a $5.1 million settlement jointly with California and New York with educational technology company Illuminate Education after a data breach exposed the personal information of millions of students – the first enforcement action under Connecticut’s Student Data Privacy Law. Under Attorney General Tong’s leadership, Connecticut led the $39.5 million multistate settlement with Anthem stemming from the massive 2014 data breach that involved the personal information of 78.8 million Americans, and the $600 million settlement with Equifax over its 2017 data breach.
He’s continuing to fight to protect genetic information collected by 23andMe after the company collected the most sensitive genetic data imaginable from millions of Americans–and then failed to safeguard it.