TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit accusing the platform of unlawfully collecting children’s personal data, the department announced Friday.
Under the settlement, which still requires court approval, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million once a court vacates a prior consent decree entered against its predecessor, Musical.ly.
The lawsuit, filed in 2024, alleged TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data on underage users without parental consent. Prosecutors said even accounts registered through a “Kids Mode” designed for children under 13 had collected email addresses and other personal details. The case traced back to a 2019 COPPA action against Musical.ly, the app ByteDance acquired in 2017 and later merged into TikTok.
“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. said, adding that the deal “secures a substantial recovery while reinforcing the protections that families expect and deserve.”
The department noted that TikTok has undergone significant changes to its ownership, management, and compliance practices since the suit was filed, including steps to strengthen safeguards, tighten age controls, and expand parental oversight tools.
The settlement comes months after ByteDance completed a restructuring of TikTok’s U.S. operations, bringing in American investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati firm MGX to form a new U.S. joint venture, with ByteDance retaining a 19.9% stake in the American entity. That deal resolved separate national-security concerns that had threatened to force a sale or ban of the app under the Trump administration.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The U.S. settlement is among the largest ever secured under COPPA and comes as regulators in other jurisdictions step up scrutiny of the platform, including an ongoing European Union investigation under the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
