TikTok and its Chinese former parent company ByteDance on Friday agreed to a $400m settlement to resolve the US Department of Justice’s allegations that the short-form video app violated children’s online privacy.
The justice department sued TikTok and ByteDance in 2024 for allegedly failing to protect children’s privacy and illegally collecting their information. The defendants were accused of violating a law requiring online services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under age 13.
Associate attorney general Stanley Woodward said the justice department’s priority “is ensuring that children are protected online and that companies entrusted with their personal information meet their legal obligations”.
TikTok did not immediately comment.
Under the settlement, TikTok will pay $300m immediately and an additional $100m upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree entered with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2019 against TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly. As part of the consent agreement, the FTC said that TikTok, then known as Musical.ly, knew that young children used the app and had failed to get parental consent to collect their names, email addresses and other personal information. It paid a fine of $5.7m.
In January, ByteDance agreed to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to secure US data and avoid a ban on the app used by more than 200 million Americans. The government noted that since the complaint was filed, TikTok has undergone significant changes to its ownership, management, compliance functions and privacy practices.
DoJ said the settlement “ensures that American families continue to benefit from stronger protections without the delay and uncertainty of protracted litigation”. The TikTok US joint venture said in a court filing it requires all users to enter their date of birth to use the site.
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TikTok said it has developed sophisticated age-moderation systems that identify children under 13 who misrepresented their age. That court filing said that TikTok has hundreds of personnel trained in underage moderation and, as a result, deletes tens of thousands underage accounts.
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