TikTok has agreed to pay the United States a total of $400 million (£293 million) to end a lawsuit that alleged the platform violated children’s privacy, one of the largest settlements in this area.
The deal stems from a 2024 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden, which accused TikTok and its parent company ByteDance of collecting "vast amounts of data" on millions of users under the age of 13 without parental consent.
These actions were claimed to breach the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law enacted in 2000. Similar penalties have been imposed on Google’s YouTube ($170 m in 2019) and Epic Games ($275 m in 2022), and Meta faces potential fines that could exceed hundreds of billions of dollars from state attorneys general.
According to the agreement, TikTok and ByteDance will immediately pay $300 million to the DOJ and a further $100 million after the U.S. government vacates a 2019 FTC consent decree. The settlement also referenced earlier fines paid by TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, which included a $5.7 million fine and a mandate to secure parental consent for users under 13.
The Department of Justice highlighted significant changes in TikTok’s ownership, privacy practices and user controls following the lawsuit. Its U.S. operations are now 81% owned by a consortium of investors, with ByteDance holding a 19% stake.
A representative of TikTok did not respond to requests for comment, while the DOJ noted that the platform had "undergone significant changes" in response to the lawsuit.
