TikTok and parent company ByteDance have reached a $400 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over federal children’s privacy violations. Announced Friday, the agreement requires an immediate $300 million payment, with another $100 million tied to vacating an earlier consent decree against predecessor Musical.ly.
COPPA Enforcement Action by U.S. Department of Justice
The massive penalty ranks among the largest enforcement actions ever secured under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, commonly known as COPPA. Federal regulators accused the popular social video platform of collecting personal information from children under 13 without obtaining required parental consent.
The DOJ alleged that TikTok collected data from children without notifying parents or obtaining consent and did not delete the accounts when parents requested. U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. called the resolution a major victory for families.
“This settlement is a major victory for American children and parents.”
Stanley E. Woodward Jr., U.S. Associate Attorney General
“The Department’s priority is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations. This resolution secures a substantial recovery while reinforcing the protections that families expect and deserve,” Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said in a statement.
Corporate Restructuring and the Path to Settlement
The federal lawsuit, originally filed in 2024 by the Biden administration’s DOJ, arrived during a period of sweeping operational changes for the platform. In January, the social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture.
Alongside these changes, the Justice Department noted that TikTok has undergone significant changes to its ownership, management, compliance functions, and privacy practices
since the lawsuit was filed.
Federal officials acknowledged that the platform has implemented extensive measures designed to strengthen safeguards for younger users, improve age-related controls, and enhance parental oversight.
TikTok didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier Lawsuit
State Litigations and European Regulatory Scrutiny
While federal regulators wrapped up their inquiry, state-level legal pressures continue to mount. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against the platform, contending that TikTok breached Florida’s child social media regulations and put minors at risk. The Florida litigation adds to the mounting legal pressures on TikTok as regulators at both federal and state levels work to protect children online.
Abroad, ByteDance faces parallel regulatory storms. TikTok faces preliminary charges from European Union regulators over account settings that the commission says expose children to predators, cyberbullying, and unwanted contact, putting the ByteDance-owned platform at risk of a fine worth up to 6% of its global annual revenue.
The European Commission said Friday that TikTok’s settings fall short of the safety standards required under the Digital Services Act. The commission found that minors can set their accounts to public, allowing anyone — including people without a TikTok account — to view their content. For users between 16 and 17 years old, public settings also allow their content to appear in other users’ For You feeds, the commission said.
Even children with private accounts are not fully shielded, the commission said. Their accounts can be located through the follower and following lists of other users, and their profile photos remain visible to anyone outside the platform.
The commission said TikTok should change the default settings of minors’ public accounts so that content is visible only to users the minor has accepted. Content from minors should under no circumstances be accessible to a global audience outside the platform, and TikTok should stop recommending minors’ content through the For You feed, the commission said.
According to the Commission, users aged 13 to 15 could switch their accounts from private to public with little friction, while the accounts of 16- and 17-year-olds remained visible to anyone online, including people without a TikTok login. That exposure, regulators said, created avenues for cyberbullying, unwanted contact, and predatory behaviour. Children’s content must never be visible to strangers,
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said, adding that default settings.
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