TikTok and ByteDance Agree to $400M US Settlement Over Children's Privacy Claims
The US Department of Justice announced a $400 million settlement with TikTok and ByteDance over alleged violations of children's online privacy law.
AfroEuropa Newsroom
AfroEuropa desk
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to a $400 million settlement with the US Department of Justice over allegations that they breached the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), according to reporting from BleepingComputer and Ventureburn.
The Justice Department first filed suit against TikTok in 2024, alleging that the short-form video platform failed to stop children from creating accounts and unlawfully gathered their personal information. Federal regulators said these actions ran counter to COPPA.
Under the terms of the agreement, TikTok will make an immediate payment of $300 million. A further $100 million is linked to a 2019 Federal Trade Commission order concerning Musical.ly, a video-sharing app that ByteDance acquired in 2017 and later folded into TikTok. According to Ventureburn, regulators said TikTok continued to collect sensitive data from young users, including precise location data, email addresses, and phone numbers, while disregarding parental requests to delete data belonging to minors, in breach of the 2019 compliance order.
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