TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a federal lawsuit over children’s privacy violations, TechCrunch reported. The agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice resolves allegations that the platform violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Axios first reported the settlement.
The Justice Department filed the case in 2024 under the Biden administration, alleging that TikTok allowed millions of children under the age of 13 onto the platform and collected their personal data without required parental consent. Alongside the $400 million fine, the settlement mandates stronger age-related controls, extra safeguards for young users, and expanded oversight tools for parents. The agreement does not require TikTok or ByteDance to admit wrongdoing.
Federal regulators previously penalized the platform’s predecessor, Musical.ly, which paid $5.7 million in 2019 to resolve COPPA allegations and pledged to block children under 13. The 2024 lawsuit alleged that TikTok continued to struggle with underage accounts, maintained children’s data for targeted advertising despite employee warnings, and modified registration procedures in ways that made verifying user ages more difficult.
The settlement follows separate scrutiny over the company’s internal testing. Bloomberg reported days earlier that TikTok turned off an algorithmic safeguard for roughly 10% of U.S. users as part of an experiment. That safeguard was designed to limit exposure to harmful content. In response, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal sent a joint letter questioning TikTok CEO Shou Chew and U.S. business head Adam Presser over the decision.
