DOJ agrees to settle children's privacy claims against TikTok for $400 million

The Justice Department said Friday it has reached an agreement to dismiss claims that TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance violated children's online privacy protections and a 2019 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The agreement requires TikTok to pay $400 million to settle allegations the company collected data on millions of children younger than 13 without their parents' consent and failing to honor data deletion requests. Axios was the first to report on the DOJ's agreement.

DOJ cited "significant changes" to TikTok's management, ownership and privacy practices since the Biden administration first filed the lawsuit in 2024.

"The company has implemented extensive measures designed to strengthen safeguards for younger users, improve age-related controls, and enhance parental oversight," DOJ said in a statement.

"The most important result is that children and parents are better protected today than they were when this case began," Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate added.

The settlement also vacates a 2019 consent decree with the FTC and TikTok's predecessor Musical.ly, dropping a privacy order required by the agency for the first time.

TikTok is now a joint venture under a group of U.S. investors, although former parent company ByteDance still retains a 19.9 percent stake.

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.

"This is a Trump bailout for Larry Ellison. TikTok's violations of children's privacy were the worst we saw in our entire time in government. This fine is a fraction of what the government should have sought, and it appears to give them a free pass to continue preying on children," Douglas Farrar, the Federal Trade Commission's director of public affairs under Biden, told POLITICO.

By Alfred Ng and Hassan Ali Kanu, 08/21/2026 08:43 PM EDT.