TikTok settles DOJ children’s privacy lawsuit for $400 million

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle the Justice Department’s children’s privacy lawsuit, the agency announced on Friday. The department calls it one of the largest recoveries ever obtained under COPPA, the federal law that limits how companies collect data from children under 13.

The money splits in two. TikTok pays $300 million immediately and another $100 million once a court vacates the prior consent decree entered against Musical.ly, its predecessor. Neither payment requires an admission of wrongdoing, and the DOJ says the claims remain allegations with no determination of liability.

Payment	Trigger
$300 million	Due immediately
$100 million	After the Musical.ly consent decree is vacated
$400 million total	Resolves the 2024 COPPA lawsuit

The case began in 2024, when the Biden administration’s Justice Department sued in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on a referral from the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint said TikTok let children under 13 create accounts and collected data on kids using its Kids Mode. It also said the company frequently failed to honor parents’ requests to delete their children’s data, as Engadget reports.

That made 2024 the second round. TikTok had paid $5.7 million in 2019 to settle allegations that Musical.ly violated COPPA, and it committed to keeping children under 13 from creating accounts, per TechCrunch. The government’s later complaint said the company still struggled to remove underage users and held children’s data that could feed targeted advertising, even after employees raised concerns.

This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents. The Department’s priority is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations.

Stanley E. Woodward Jr., Associate Attorney General, via the Justice Department

So why settle now? The DOJ credits changes TikTok has made since the complaint was filed, covering its ownership, management, compliance functions and privacy practices. The app’s US business now sits inside the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which is controlled by investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, with ByteDance keeping a 19.9 percent stake.

The timing isn’t entirely clean, though. Days before the deal, Bloomberg reported that TikTok had intentionally disabled an algorithmic safeguard, one designed to keep users from being overwhelmed by harmful content, for roughly 10% of US users as an experiment. That report prompted Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal to send a letter questioning the decision to CEO Shou Chew and Adam Presser, who runs the US business, TechCrunch notes.

The scrutiny of how platforms treat minors keeps widening beyond TikTok. OpenAI recently made ChatGPT for Teens the default for under-18 users, and it’s previewing privacy infrastructure built to keep zero data retention. Washington’s posture on TikTok itself has softened, even so: earlier this month the OMB cleared federal workers to use the app again, after a 2022 law banned it from most government devices.

What’s left is mostly procedural. The final $100 million only moves after a court vacates the Musical.ly consent decree, so the next signal comes from the Central District of California docket. TikTok didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, Fox Business reported.