TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have reached a $400 million settlement with the US Department of Justice. This agreement resolves allegations that TikTok violated federal laws designed to protect children’s privacy. The announcement was made on Friday, marking a significant development in the ongoing scrutiny of the platform’s data practices regarding young users.
COPPA bars websites from gathering the personal information of children younger than 13 without parental permission. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission jointly sued TikTok in 2024, alleging that it had placed the safety of millions of children in jeopardy by collecting their personal data without parental permission.
“Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered against TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly,” the department said in a statement. It’s “one of the largest recoveries ever obtained” from a case involving the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the statement continued.
They claimed that TikTok allowed children to use the app in addition to collecting and using personal data from young users without letting their parents know. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) In 2019, the US filed a COPPA lawsuit against an app called Musical.ly, which ByteDance bought in 2017 and then merged into TikTok.
Even accounts created in a “Kids Mode” intended for users younger than 13 gathered email addresses and other personal information, the suit claimed.
