TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have agreed to pay $400 million to resolve a major U.S. legal case over violations of children's privacy laws. The settlement could be one of the costliest cases related to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the United States.
According to ITNA, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday that TikTok and ByteDance agreed to pay this amount to settle a complaint alleging violations of federal laws protecting children's information.
According to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, TikTok must pay $300 million immediately. An additional $100 million will be paid after the rescission of a prior agreement related to Musical.ly, the app that was owned by ByteDance before becoming TikTok.
The U.S. Department of Justice said this settlement is one of the largest amounts ever obtained in a case related to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Allegation of collecting information on millions of children
The case relates to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the United States, a law that prohibits websites and online services from collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission jointly filed a complaint against TikTok in 2024. In that complaint, the two agencies alleged that TikTok violated federal laws by allowing children to use the platform and collecting their personal information without parental knowledge and consent.
According to the allegations in the case, TikTok collected and used the personal information of millions of child users. This information included email addresses and other personal user data.
U.S. officials also said that even some accounts created under a "kids mode" for users under 13 still allowed the collection of personal information.
The case traces back to Musical.ly
The case has several years of history. The U.S. government took legal action against Musical.ly in 2019 under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
ByteDance purchased the Musical.ly app in 2017 and later merged that service into TikTok. For that reason, some obligations and legal issues related to Musical.ly continued in TikTok-related cases.
Now, the $400 million agreement among TikTok, ByteDance, and the U.S. government could bring one of the company's most significant legal matters in the area of children's privacy to an end; a case that again highlights U.S. lawmakers' sensitivity to how data about underage users is collected and used on social networks.