Story perspectives

TikTok Agrees to Pay $400 Million DOJ Settlement

8/23/2026

Summary

TikTok Settles Lawsuit

TikTok and parent ByteDance agreed to pay $400 million to settle the DOJ child-privacy lawsuit.
The settlement requires $300 million now and $100 million after a court vacates the 2019 consent decree.
The DOJ and FTC alleged TikTok collected email addresses and data from users under 13 without parental consent.
The DOJ said TikTok has added age-verification controls, parental-oversight tools, and stronger data safeguards.
TikTok’s U.S. operations now run under a majority-American joint venture with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX.

Summary

TikTok Kids Violation

TikTok staff reviewed each under-age profile for only five to seven seconds, 2024 complaint says.
The team deleting under-13 accounts sometimes had fewer than 24 employees.
TikTok’s Kids Mode still collected email addresses and device identifiers despite promises to limit data.
The complaint alleges TikTok shared under-age users’ data with Facebook and a marketing firm for re-targeting.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission fined TikTok €345 million in September 2023 for similar children-privacy violations.

History

Historical Context

Congress enacted the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in 1998, effective 21 April 2000, to require parental consent for data from users under 13. After courts blocked the similar 1998 Child Online Protection Act in 2009, regulators have continued targeting platforms, leading to the FTC’s 2012 action against Google and recent DOJ and Irish investigations of TikTok under the RESTRICT Act framework.

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TikTok Settles Lawsuit

TikTok and parent ByteDance agreed to pay $400 million to settle the DOJ child-privacy lawsuit.
The settlement requires $300 million now and $100 million after a court vacates the 2019 consent decree.
The DOJ and FTC alleged TikTok collected email addresses and data from users under 13 without parental consent.
The DOJ said TikTok has added age-verification controls, parental-oversight tools, and stronger data safeguards.
TikTok’s U.S. operations now run under a majority-American joint venture with Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX.

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