TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit accusing the app of illegally collecting data from children under 13. The DOJ, in a suit filed in 2024, alleged TikTok gathered personal information without parental consent and ignored requests from parents to delete their children's accounts.
Under the deal, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately, with the remaining $100 million due once a decade-old consent decree against its predecessor app Musical.ly is vacated. U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. called the settlement "a major victory for American children and parents."
It is one of the largest recoveries ever secured in a case under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and lands as Meta faces a separate ongoing trial over similar child-privacy violations, with regulators worldwide tightening rules on how platforms handle young users.