TikTok to pay $400m in US to end children's online privacy case in one of largest settlements agreed by Big Tech

Published: 10:12, 22 August 2026 | Updated: 10:15, 22 August 2026 TikTok has agreed to pay $400m (£293 million) in the US to settle a landmark case against them for violating children's online privacy in what is being hailed as 'a major victory for parents and their children'. The social media and video platform app agreed to what is one of the largest ever settlements agreed by big tech in a similar case yesterday after being accused of illegally harvesting the details of millions of users aged under 13 in the US. The US Department of Justice sued TikTok and its Chinese former parent company ByteDance in August 2024 during former president Joe Biden's administration for allegedly failing to protect children's privacy and illegally collecting their information including names and email addresses. A federal law enacted in 2000 – the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (known as COPPA), to protect the privacy of children under 13, was used to bring the accusations. At the time, more than 170 million teenagers were estimated to be using TikTok and government lawyers said the app was 'directed to children' but did not effectively assess the age of users or get parental consent for underage children. The same legislation is currently being used by 29 states to sue Meta for misusing children's data and profiting from them in a major court case which started this week. Meta denies the allegations but could face fines of hundreds of billions of dollars which would far eclipse yesterday's settlement. In 2024, Biden had pushed for TikTok to be banned or be forced to sell off its US operations. A sell off happened last year with Donald Trump's support. TikTok has agreed to pay $400million to end a children's online privacy case in the US TikTok's US operations are now 81% owned by a consortium of investors, while ByteDance maintains a 19% stake. Following the settlement, US Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said: 'Children and parents are better protected today than they were when this case began.' But in the UK, former film director Baroness Beeban Kidron, who has campaigned for children's digital safety, said today she thought fines would not work against big tech companies because TikTok in itself 'was worth $550 billion at the last count' so $400 million is 'a drop in the ocean'. 'I saw reporting recently that they put aside $1 billion a year for legal contestation and settling fines so let's hold on to the real point here – we don't want to fine them for not being safe, we want to make them safe,' she told the BBC. And she warned that while the UK had been 'ahead of the curve' with regulation and online safety codes, they were not enforced properly here leading tech platforms to 'get the idea that they had free rein'. 'Some of that is down to political will,' she told Radio 4's Today programme. Former film director Baroness Beeban Kidron said she did not think fines against companies such as TikTok would work Former TikTok executive Trevor Johnson said the 'accountability of big tech platforms to children for privacy and protection has to continue to be ongoing'. Calling for further regulation on them, he agreed with Baroness Kidron that 'fines were not the best way to do that' and were just seen by the companies as 'a tax on doing business'. 'Think about the likes of Google and Facebook. They pay these fines but it is based on billions and billions of pounds of business that has been done so it's not a huge punishment for these folks.' Under the terms of the settlement, TikTok and ByteDance will immediately pay $300m followed by a further $100m. As part of the agreement, Musical.ly, ByteDance's predecessor, was required to pay a $5.7m fine for COPPA violations and ensure it sought parental consent for any user aged under 13. The TikTok ​US joint venture said ​in a court filing it now requires ​all users to enter their date of birth to use the ​site. The US government noted that since the complaint was filed, TikTok has 'undergone significant changes' including to its ownership, privacy practices and platform controls for young users. Other companies who have already paid penalties to the US government for COPPA violations include Google who paid a $170m fine for its YouTube platform in 2019, and Epic Games, which paid $275m in 2022.