The Justice Department said Friday that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, will pay $400 million to end a lawsuit over children’s online privacy rules.
The companies will pay $300 million now and $100 million once a judge vacates an older consent decree that hit Musical.ly, which was merged with TikTok. Officials called the sum one of the largest ever paid out under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The companies do not have to admit fault, according to the terms of the deal.
“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr said in a statement. “The Department's priority is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations. This resolution secures a substantial recovery while reinforcing the protections that families expect and deserve.”
Representatives for TikTok and ByteDance did not return requests for comment.
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, from the Justice Department’s (DOJ) Civil Division, said that companies that collect children’s personal information must comply with the law.
“This resolution secures a significant monetary recovery and reflects the Department’s commitment to ensuring children receive the full protections that Congress mandated,” he said.
The suit was filed in 2024 in the Central District of California. The Civil Division’s Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch inherited the case from the Federal Trade Commission.
Since the filing, TikTok was purchased by new owners and compliance and privacy practices were overhauled. The company put stronger safeguards in place for younger users, such as improved age controls and parental oversight.
“Those developments have materially advanced the public interests underlying the Department’s litigation and have strengthened protections for millions of American families,” the DOJ said.
COPPA ensures that online services targeting kids under the age of 13, or those that capture their data, need notice and real parental consent first. The 2024 complaint said TikTok failed to do this.
The settlement comes after The White House earlier this month allowed executive branch employees to use TikTok on their government devices.
The app was banned from government devices in 2022 due to national security concerns surrounding TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, its connection to the Chinese Communist Party, and the app’s ability to gather large amounts of data on Americans, among other things.
The U.S. version of the app is now run by the TikTok U.S. Data Security Joint Venture, whose majority ownership consists of American investors.
The DOJ said the TikTok U.S. Data Security Joint Venture employs third-party cybersecurity experts to monitor and certify privacy, while simultaneously detecting any vulnerabilities.
“These safeguards would appear to make TikTok USDS just as data-secure as any other social networking service, if not more so,” the DOJ said in a July 17 memo.