AIBRIEF
Three quarters of the $400M moves now; the rest waits on a federal court closing the 2019 Musical.ly (the predecessor app that became TikTok) consent decree.
TikTok will pay the US Department of Justice $400 million (£293 million) to end a 2024 federal lawsuit over its collection of children's data, but one quarter of the sum is held back until a court formally closes out a 2019 consent decree against Musical.ly, TikTok's predecessor app.
The Justice Department said Friday TikTok will pay $300 million immediately. The remaining $100 million is due only once a court vacates the Musical.ly decree, a 2019 order requiring the older app to stop collecting data on children under 13. The deferred sum is the lever for closing a six-year-old chapter of the same enforcement file, not a payment plan.
The 2024 complaint alleged TikTok and its China-based parent ByteDance violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, collecting data on under-13 users without parental consent and ignoring deletion requests. Associate attorney general Stanley E. Woodward Jr. called the settlement a "major victory for American children and parents" in a DOJ statement. TikTok declined to comment on Friday.
The settlement lands in a crowded field. Meta Platforms is on trial in Oakland federal court over similar COPPA allegations, and TikTok's US ownership was reorganized in January, with Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX forming a new joint venture, a separate deal the settlement does not resolve.
The court order vacating the Musical.ly decree is the next milestone. Until it lands, the final $100 million is conditional.