TikTok to pay $400M to US in one of largest child privacy settlements

TikTok has agreed to pay $400 million to the US to end a lawsuit alleging its platform violated children‘s privacy, marking one of the largest ever settlements over the issue, Report informs via BBC.

The deal stems from a 2024 suit by the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden alleging TikTok and its parent company ByteDance collected "vast amounts of data" on millions of users under the age of 13.

Doing so was against the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law enacted in 2000. It is the same law that dozens of US states are now suing Meta over.

"Children and parents are better protected today than they were when this case began," assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said.

Other companies to have paid penalties to the US government for COPPA violations include Google's YouTube, which in 2019 paid $170 million, and Epic Games, which in 2022 paid $275 million.

Under the terms of the deal, TikTok and ByteDance will immediately pay the DOJ $300 million. It will pay another $100 million when the government vacates a 2019 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.

As part of the agreement, the predecessor to ByteDance, Musical.ly, was required to pay a $5.7 million fine for COPPA violations and ensure it sought parental consent for any user aged under 13.