TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have reached a settlement with the US Department of Justice involving a $400 million payment to resolve allegations that the platform violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal information from millions of users under age 13.
The lawsuit was filed in 2024 during the Biden administration and alleged that TikTok and ByteDance accumulated extensive data on young users without proper age verification or parental consent, contrary to requirements established by COPPA, a federal law enacted in 2000. According to the justice department, the platform was directed toward children yet failed to effectively determine users’ ages or obtain parental permission from minors. At the time of the filing, more than 170 million teenagers were reportedly using TikTok.
Under the settlement terms, TikTok and ByteDance will immediately transfer $300 million to the DOJ, with an additional $100 million due when the government vacates a 2019 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission. Additionally, Musical.ly, ByteDance’s predecessor company, was required to pay a $5.7 million fine and implement parental consent requirements for users under 13.
The settlement ranks among the largest child privacy settlements in US history. Other companies penalized for similar COPPA violations include Google’s YouTube, which paid $170 million in 2019, and Epic Games, which paid $275 million in 2022. Meta currently faces potential penalties exceeding hundreds of billions of dollars in a separate lawsuit brought by attorneys general from 29 states, with jury proceedings having recently begun.
The justice department indicated that since filing suit, TikTok has undertaken significant modifications to its ownership structure, privacy policies, and user controls for younger users. ByteDance, valued at $550 billion, remains a privately held company. Following prior divestment efforts, TikTok’s US operations are now 81 percent owned by a consortium of investors, with ByteDance retaining a 19 percent stake.
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