TikTok nears $400m child privacy settlement

The Trump administration is nearing a US$400 million settlement with TikTok to resolve a US lawsuit over alleged violations of child privacy laws, according to a report.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission sued TikTok and parent company ByteDance in 2024, alleging the app collected and retained data from users under 13 without parental consent in breach of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

The report also said White House officials have discussed using the settlement money for Trump’s Washington projects, while ByteDance completed a majority American-owned joint venture earlier this year to help avoid a US ban.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

TikTok faces a repeat claim over child privacy

The 2024 lawsuit is not TikTok’s first run-in with this issue. Musical.ly, the short-video app TikTok later absorbed, paid a US$5.7 million fine in 2019 over similar child privacy violations 1.
The government says TikTok broke the 2019 consent order. That could bring penalties of up to US$51,744 per violation per day from Jan. 10, 2024 to the present 2.
Separately, TikTok’s new U.S. joint venture revised its terms of service in January 2026. One account says the terms plainly ban children under 13 from using the platform 3.
The case fits a broader crackdown. Google and YouTube agreed to pay US$170 million in 2019, while dozens of U.S. states sued Meta Platforms in 2023 over alleged harm to young users. A lawsuit from 33 states also says Meta collects data on children under 13 without parental consent in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 1.

The case may help shape future rules

The settlement and the new U.S. joint venture that keeps TikTok operating in the U.S. may give regulators a template for foreign-owned apps, pairing structural changes tied to national security with penalties for alleged misconduct.
As TikTok deals with claims over past child privacy violations, its new U.S. joint venture also changed its privacy policy to allow collecting “precise location data, depending on your settings” rather than the prior U.S. policy’s reference to “approximate” location data 4.
The dispute may push other social platforms to tighten age checks and rewrite their terms of service. The claim that such changes are meant to shift liability away from the company is not plainly backed by the cited source 3.