Justice Department and TikTok settle children’s privacy lawsuit for $400M

TikTok and parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging the platform violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, better known as COPPA. The deal, first reported by Axios, resolves the case without TikTok admitting wrongdoing or facing further litigation.

What TikTok was accused of doing

The DOJ filed its complaint on August 2, 2024, in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The core allegation was straightforward: TikTok knowingly let children under 13 create accounts without obtaining parental consent, then collected their personal information anyway.

Federal law is pretty clear on this. COPPA requires platforms to get verifiable parental consent before gathering data from kids under 13. The DOJ argued TikTok not only failed to do this but also ignored parental requests to delete their children’s data.

This wasn’t TikTok’s first brush with COPPA enforcement either. Back in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission hit TikTok’s predecessor app, Musical.ly, with a then-record $5.7 million penalty for similar violations.

TikTok has maintained that it exceeds legal requirements for age verification and parental controls. The settlement lets the company hold that position publicly while writing a very large check privately.

From $1 billion to $400 million

The final number is actually a discount compared to what was initially on the table. In spring 2024, TikTok had been negotiating a potential $1 billion settlement with the FTC before the DOJ took over the case. The resulting figure came in at less than half that earlier proposal.

$400 million is still a meaningful sum in the context of privacy enforcement. It dwarfs the 2019 penalty by a factor of roughly 70.

The Biden administration’s DOJ originally brought the suit, making this settlement a rare case of regulatory continuity across administrations. The deal reached resolution in 2026.

A pattern of regulatory pressure

TikTok has been navigating an unusually dense thicket of US regulatory and legislative action over the past several years, ranging from children’s privacy concerns to national security fears about its Chinese ownership structure.

The national security dimension led to a restructuring of TikTok’s US operations into an entity with majority non-Chinese ownership. That process played out on a parallel track to the privacy litigation.

The $400 million settlement addresses only the COPPA violations. It doesn’t resolve broader questions about how TikTok handles adult user data, how its recommendation algorithm works, or whether the platform’s ties to China pose ongoing risks.

The jump from $5.7 million in 2019 to $400 million in 2026 tells a clear story about where enforcement is headed.

What comes next

The settlement will need court approval before it becomes final. Assuming the judge signs off, TikTok avoids the uncertainty of a trial and the risk of an even larger judgment. The DOJ gets a headline-worthy number and a precedent that strengthens its hand in future COPPA cases against other platforms.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.