The Justice Department said Friday that TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit accusing the video app and its parent, ByteDance, of collecting personal information from millions of users under 13 without parental consent, in one of the largest penalties ever levied under the federal children's privacy statute.
The settlement closes a Biden-era case that has shadowed TikTok through its forced U.S. restructuring, and it lands as a parallel jury trial in Oakland tests whether state attorneys general can wring far larger sums from Meta under the same 2000 law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
The terms
Under the agreement, TikTok and ByteDance will pay $300 million to the Justice Department immediately and another $100 million once a court vacates a 2019 consent decree entered against Musical.ly, the lip-syncing app whose assets became part of TikTok. Musical.ly had paid $5.7 million to settle that earlier COPPA case and was ordered to obtain parental consent for any user under 13. The department called Friday's total "one of the largest recoveries ever obtained in a COPPA case."
The 2024 suit
The Justice Department sued TikTok in 2024 under President Biden, alleging the platform collected "vast amounts of data" on millions of users under 13 without notifying parents or obtaining their consent, and failed to delete children's accounts when parents requested. Government lawyers said at the time that more than 170 million teenagers used TikTok and that the app was "directed to children." Enacted in 2000, COPPA bars operators of online services aimed at children from collecting personal information without verifiable parental consent.
"Children and parents are better protected today than they were when this case began," assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said.
Changes at TikTok
The department said TikTok has "undergone significant changes to its ownership, management, compliance functions, and privacy practices" since the suit was filed and has "implemented extensive measures designed to strengthen safeguards for younger users, improve age-related controls, and enhance parental oversight." TikTok's U.S. business is now 81 percent owned by a consortium of investors, with ByteDance retaining the remaining 19 percent, a structure completed in January after President Trump backed the divestment path Biden first pushed in 2024. Privately held ByteDance was most recently valued by investors at $550 billion.
Company response
TikTok did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge, and a company representative did not respond to the BBC. Both of the outlets that reported the settlement filed from the same wire-desk vantage point; ByteDance's response, if any, was not yet on the record by press time. The Justice Department disclosed no additional action against the platform beyond the fine.
Precedent
The payment continues a mounting COPPA tally. Google's YouTube paid $170 million in 2019 and Epic Games paid $275 million in 2022. A far larger action against Meta opened Tuesday in Oakland, where attorneys general from 29 states are seeking damages that lawyers for the states have said could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars over similar allegations against Instagram and Facebook. TikTok's $100 million tail will land only after the Musical.ly consent decree is formally vacated.