The U.S. Department of Justice reached a $400 million agreement on August 21, 2026, with TikTok, ByteDance, and their affiliated entities to resolve allegations that the companies broke federal children's privacy law.
Of that total, $300 million is due immediately, the Justice Department said. The remaining $100 million becomes payable once a prior consent decree is vacated. That earlier decree had been entered against Musical.ly, the predecessor company to TikTok.
The litigation centered on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, along with its implementing regulations. TechCrunch reported that federal authorities had first alleged the violations roughly two years before the settlement was announced.
The Justice Department placed the recovery among the largest ever obtained in a COPPA enforcement action.