TikTok, ByteDance, and affiliated entities have agreed to pay $400 million to settle litigation regarding compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the U.S. Justice Department announced. Under the agreement, $300 million is payable immediately.
The remaining $100 million is contingent upon a court entering an order that vacates a prior consent decree against Musical.ly, an app that ByteDance acquired in 2017 and later integrated into TikTok. The Justice Department noted that the figure is one of the largest recoveries ever recorded in a COPPA case.
The settlement follows a joint lawsuit filed by the U.S. DOJ and the FTC against ByteDance in a Californian federal court in August 2024. The complaint alleged that ByteDance knowingly allowed children under 13 to create regular accounts, enabling them to interact with adults and posting content while collecting personal data without parental consent and ignoring deletion requests. Government lawyers stated that the platform had more than 170 million teenage users.
The DOJ highlighted that TikTok has since undergone significant structural changes, moving its U.S. operations into a joint venture controlled by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, while ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake. The company has also implemented measures to strengthen safeguards for younger users, age controls, and parental oversight.
Separately, U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew and U.S. spinoff head Adam Presser regarding internal documents. The senators are seeking answers by September 1 concerning allegations that the company withheld a safety feature from a control group of U.S. users to test the feature's impact on user engagement.
