TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have agreed to pay $400 million to settle a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit accusing the platform of violating federal children’s privacy law. The settlement resolves a case first filed in 2024 under the Biden administration, which alleged that TikTok allowed millions of children under 13 to use the service and collected their personal data without the parental consent required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. The deal also requires TikTok to implement stronger age controls, additional child-safety safeguards, and give parents more oversight over their children’s activity and information. Neither TikTok nor ByteDance admitted wrongdoing under the agreement. Axios first reported the settlement.
The 2024 case stated that TikTok had kept large numbers of underage users on the platform for years, even after facing federal action on children’s privacy in 2019. In that earlier matter, the company paid $5.7 million to settle claims that its predecessor app, Musical.ly, had violated COPPA. As part of that prior settlement, TikTok committed to preventing children under 13 from creating accounts. But the new allegations claimed the company continued to struggle to identify and remove underage users.
According to the lawsuit, TikTok retained and used personal information belonging to children, including data that could support targeted advertising, even after employees raised concerns about young users being present on the platform. The DOJ also alleged that TikTok changed parts of its registration process in ways that made it harder to verify whether users were old enough to join. These practices formed the basis of the government’s claims that the company had not lived up to its earlier promises.
The settlement comes as TikTok faces additional scrutiny over its safety practices. Days before the deal was announced, Bloomberg reported that TikTok had intentionally turned off an algorithmic safeguard for about 10 percent of U.S. users as part of an experiment. That safeguard was designed to reduce the chance that users would see overwhelming or harmful content. The report prompted criticism from lawmakers in both parties.
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew and Adam Presser, the head of the company’s U.S. operations, questioning the decision to disable the safeguard. The senators raised concerns about the potential impact on users, particularly younger ones. TikTok has not publicly responded to that letter. The company’s broader legal and regulatory challenges in the U.S. continue, with this settlement addressing one of the most prominent federal complaints against it.
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