TikTok reaches $400 million settlement with US Justice Department over children’s privacy News
Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
TikTok reaches $400 million settlement with US Justice Department over children’s privacy

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday announced a $400 million settlement with Tiktok over children’s privacy concerns, effectively ending a dispute that has been ongoing for over two years. The case concerned allegations of obtaining personal information of children under 13 without parental consent.

TikTok will pay $300 million immediately; the remaining $100 million will become due once the court enters an order vacating a 2019 consent decree against Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor.

The initial suit, filed in the Central District of California in August 2024, charged that Tiktok and its parent company, ByteDance, knowingly allowed children under 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The suit also alleges that the defendants collected extensive data from said children, and that they have failed to comply with parental request to delete the children’s accounts and any collected personal information. The DOJ claimed that TikTok and ByteDance violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (“COPPA”) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“Rule” or “COPPA Rule”),

“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr in the DOJ’s statement. Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division also spoke for the government, saying: “Companies that collect children’s personal information must comply with the law.”

The 2019 order stems from previous COPPA violations against Musical.ly. Former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Joe Simon said at the time of the first settlement that Musical.ly (by that point, TikTok) “knew” children were using their app and “failed to seek parental consent” before collecting things such as names, email addresses, and other personal information from said children aged twelve and younger. The $5.7 million penalty, at the time, was the largest civil penalty ever obtained in a children’s privacy case by the FTC.

This settlement follows a period of unrest for TikTok. In compliance with a September 2025 Executive Order (EO) by US President Donald Trump, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was established in January to hand control over the social media site to US hands. Under the deal, ByteDance sold a majority stake in TikTok to Oracle, Silver Lake, and the Emirati investment firm MGX. Representatives for TikTok and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment. At the start of this litigation, Tiktok stated that most of the allegations “relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.” They also did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Currently, a landmark federal lawsuit is underway alleging that Meta had violated online privacy laws by knowingly collecting the personal data of millions of children under 13 without parental consent.

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