TikTok agrees $400m US settlement over children’s data
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TikTok and parent company ByteDance have finalised a $400 million settlement with the US Department of Justice over a lawsuit alleging breaches of federal children's privacy law, according to Axios. The deal, which does not require TikTok to admit wrongdoing, comes as the platform faces fresh scrutiny after Bloomberg reported it had deliberately disabled a safeguard designed to limit harmful content for roughly 10% of US users as part of an experiment, prompting US senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal to demand answers from TikTok's leadership.
The underlying case, filed in 2024 under the Biden administration, accused TikTok of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by letting millions of under-13s use the app and collecting their data without parental consent, despite a prior $5.7 million settlement in 2019 over similar failings at its Musical.ly predecessor. Alongside the payment, TikTok has agreed to introduce stronger age controls, additional child-safety measures and tools giving parents greater oversight of their children's activity and data.
- TikTok and ByteDance to pay $400 million over child privacy lawsuit
- Deal follows 2024 DOJ case alleging COPPA violations affecting under-13s
- Senators question TikTok after report it disabled a safety safeguard
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TikTok is a short-video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, hugely popular with teenagers and children despite officially requiring users to be at least 13. US law, known as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, sets strict rules on how companies can collect and use data from children under that age, including requiring parental consent.
In 2024, the US government sued TikTok, arguing the platform had knowingly allowed millions of under-13s onto the app and gathered their personal data without permission from parents. This was not the company's first brush with this issue: TikTok's earlier version, Musical.ly, had already paid a smaller settlement over similar concerns in 2019.
The case matters because it touches on wider, long-running worries among regulators, lawmakers and parents about how social media platforms affect children, from data privacy to exposure to harmful content. TikTok has also faced broader political scrutiny in the US over its ownership by a Chinese parent company, making disputes like this one part of a larger pattern of oversight the platform is under.
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Originally published by TechCrunch as “TikTok reaches $400M settlement over children’s privacy lawsuit”.