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 parenta...