TikTok will pay $400 million to settle DOJ child privacy lawsuit

JUST IN: TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a US Department of Justice lawsuit alleging it collected data from children without parental consent, violating federal child privacy law.

Four hundred million dollars. That's what TikTok is paying to make a child privacy lawsuit go away.

The Justice Department sued back in 2024, and the claims were ugly. TikTok allegedly collected data from kids without telling parents or getting consent, and when parents asked for accounts to be deleted, they weren't. That's the app right there, the one on your kid's phone.

The DOJ calls this one of the largest recoveries ever in a children's privacy case, and here's their headquarters, where the deal was announced Friday. The structure is interesting. TikTok pays 300 million up front, and the last 100 million only lands once a court wipes out an old consent decree against Musical. ly, the app TikTok grew out of. So even the settlement comes with strings.

TikTok says it's changed ownership, management, and privacy practices since then. Maybe so. But the receipt still reads 400 million dollars, and the word next to it is children.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.