TikTok has agreed to pay $400 million to settle charges it violated the federal children's privacy law by collecting personal information from users younger than 13, the Department
of Justice said late Friday.
The deal
resolves a complaint brought by the Justice Department in August 2024, when authorities alleged that the app -- then owned by the Chinese company ByteDance -- allowed children 12 and under to bypass a
"Kids Mode" setting that would have restricted data collection.
The government's complaint included allegations that TikTok failed to comply with
a 2019 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over potential violations of the Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act. That law prohibits operators of websites and apps from knowingly collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent.
advertisement
advertisement
That
prior settlement required TikTok to pay over $5 million and also comply with numerous conditions going forward. The current deal calls for those conditions to be set aside.
On Friday, the
Justice Department said in a motion to vacate the prior order that it's "no longer necessary to serve the public interest."
The government elaborated that the 2019 settlement
grew out of practices by TikTok's predecessor company Musical.ly, as opposed to "the TikTok platform as it exists and operates today."
Earlier this year, ByteDance sold TikTok's U.S. operations to a joint venture of investors -- including Oracle, which is run
by Trump ally Larry Ellison.
The current agreement calls for TikTok to pay $300 million now, and another $100 million after the prior order is vacated.
The Justice
Department stated the claims resolved by the settlements "are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability."