San Diego sues AppLovin over explicit ads on kids' devices
San Diego County has sued AppLovin, a mobile advertising technology company, for serving inappropriate ads to children. According to Bloomberg, the county alleges that AppLovin bypassed parental controls to display ads for adult dating services, alcohol, vaping, and graphic sexual content in games played by children.
Complaint Details
The complaint, filed with San Diego Superior Court on Monday, claims that AppLovin collected sensitive data from children's devices, including their locations and study areas, even when parental controls and ad-tracking opt-outs were active. This practice is allegedly done through fingerprinting, a technique used to track children for ad targeting without parental consent.
"AppLovin disregards child safety tools to harvest children’s sensitive personal information... to feed it into the company’s artificial intelligence advertising engine." — Complaint
Ads in Question
The suit includes screenshots of ads depicting sex acts and inappropriate content appearing in apps marked as suitable for kids. One example shows an ad for a sexualised AI chatbot app within a physics-based puzzle game installed on an Android device configured for a six-year-old with Google’s parental controls enabled. Another screenshot displays ads for cannabis gummies on the same device.
AppLovin's Response
AppLovin has not yet responded to Bloomberg's request for comment. Their policies for ad buyers, effective from June 18, prohibit sexually explicit content, tobacco and nicotine, illegal drugs (except alcohol, which requires approval). However, the policies state that advertisers are "solely responsible" for determining if a user is a child.
Previous Fingerprinting Claims
In 2025, short sellers Fuzzy Panda and Muddy Waters accused AppLovin of harvesting proprietary identifiers from other platforms without authorisation. CEO Adam Foroughi denied these claims in a blog post, stating that the reports contained "littered with inaccuracies". The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigated AppLovin’s data collection practices but closed the investigation without recommending enforcement action.
New Consumer Protection Unit
The San Diego case is one of three filed on Monday by the county's new Consumer Fairness and Public Protection Unit, established in response to perceived dwindling federal enforcement.