For nearly two years, TikTok has faced mounting regulatory and political pressure in the United States, and the latest chapter of this scrutiny has concluded with a major legal settlement. The short-form video platform and its parent company ByteDance have agreed to pay a $400 million penalty to the U.S. government to resolve a federal lawsuit claiming the platform violated long-standing U.S. child online privacy rules. This settlement ranks among the largest financial penalties ever imposed for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The lawsuit behind this resolution was first filed in 2024 by the U.S. Department of Justice during the administration of former President Joe Biden. Prosecutors alleged that TikTok and ByteDance illegally gathered massive volumes of personal data from millions of platform users under the age of 13, a direct violation of COPPA. Enacted in 2000, COPPA mandates that online platforms obtain explicit parental consent before collecting personal information from children younger than 13, the same federal regulation that is now at the center of multiple ongoing lawsuits against Meta from dozens of U.S. states.
In a statement announcing the settlement, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate emphasized that the outcome leaves children and families with stronger privacy protections than existed when the legal action was first launched. This $400 million penalty far outpaces many previous COPPA-related fines: Google’s YouTube paid a $170 million penalty for similar violations in 2019, while video game developer Epic Games paid $275 million to resolve COPPA claims in 2022. Currently, Meta is facing potential penalties that could surpass hundreds of billions of dollars, after 29 state attorneys general brought suit against the social media giant. A jury trial in that case started earlier this week, where Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, stands accused of deliberately targeting child users to generate advertising revenue off minor users.
Notably, the 2024 lawsuit against TikTok predates the 2025 divestment of TikTok’s U.S. operations from its Chinese parent company, a process mandated by U.S. political pressure. Under the terms of the current settlement, only TikTok’s pre-divestment corporate structure faces penalties. The agreement outlines a staggered payment schedule: TikTok and ByteDance will pay an initial $300 million to the Department of Justice immediately, with the remaining $100 million due only after U.S. regulators vacate an existing 2019 consent decree issued by the Federal Trade Commission.
This is not TikTok’s first run-in with COPPA regulators. In the 2019 consent decree, Musical.ly – the predecessor app that ByteDance acquired and rebranded as TikTok – paid a $5.7 million fine for COPPA violations and committed to implementing age verification and parental consent processes for under-13 users.
The Department of Justice announced on Friday that no additional action against TikTok will be pursued beyond the financial penalty. Regulators did note, however, that since the lawsuit was filed, TikTok has implemented sweeping changes to its platform, including overhauls to its ownership structure, privacy policies, and content and data controls for young users. When the lawsuit was originally filed, federal prosecutors noted that more than 170 million American minors used the platform, arguing that TikTok was inherently designed to appeal to children yet failed to implement effective age checking or required parental consent for underage users.
Political pressure on TikTok predates the 2024 lawsuit. In 2024, former President Biden pushed U.S. policymakers to either implement a full national ban on TikTok or force a full divestment of its U.S. operations from ByteDance. Former President Donald Trump, who first raised national security concerns about TikTok during his first term, supported the 2025 divestment process that has restructured the platform’s U.S. ownership. Today, a consortium of U.S.-based investors holds 81% of TikTok’s U.S. operations, while ByteDance retains a 19% minority stake.
As of this reporting, a TikTok representative has not responded to requests for comment from the BBC.