Tiktok just paid $400 million for stealing kids' data

The Department of Justice hit TikTok with a $400 million penalty for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The suit, filed in 2024, accused the platform of collecting data from kids without telling parents or getting consent — and then refusing to delete accounts when parents asked for them. The settlement is one of the largest COPPA recoveries on record.

Tiktok is paying $300 million now, with another $100 million triggered once a prior consent decree against its predecessor, Musical.ly, is vacated. That split reflects the messy history of the app: Musical.ly was acquired by ByteDance in 2017, merged into TikTok, and left a trail of legal obligations that the DOJ is now collecting on.

Why this matters for us: the fine is a slap, not a sentence — it costs the company less than a quarter of a percent of its annual revenue, and the underlying practice of harvesting kids' data continues with no criminal liability, no prison, and no real deterrence for the next platform.