A federal judge in Los Angeles indicated on Friday that he would reject part of a proposed $400 million settlement between TikTok, its Chinese parent ByteDance, and the U.S. Justice Department over children’s online privacy.
Under the August agreement, TikTok would pay $300 million immediately to settle allegations that the short-video app violated U.S. children’s privacy laws. A further $100 million was contingent on a court terminating a 2019 consent decree that the Federal Trade Commission imposed on TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.
U.S. District Judge George H. Wu said he was inclined to reject the request to end that decree. Without further details, the court “cannot determine that it constitutes a durable remedy or that termination is suitably tailored to the asserted change in circumstance,” Wu said in tentatively rejecting the bid. He scheduled a hearing for Monday.
The 2019 decree requires TikTok to maintain certain reporting and record-keeping obligations through 2029. The FTC said that year that Musical.ly, later folded into TikTok, knew young children were using the app but failed to obtain parental consent before collecting names, email addresses and other personal information. Musical.ly paid a $5.7 million fine to settle those allegations.
The $400 million settlement stems from a Justice Department lawsuit filed in 2024 accusing TikTok and ByteDance of failing to protect children’s privacy and illegally collecting their personal information. The companies were accused of violating a law requiring online services aimed at children to obtain parental consent before collecting information from users under 13.
The government said TikTok had undergone changes since the lawsuit was filed, including to its ownership structure, management, compliance functions and privacy practices. In January, ByteDance agreed to establish a majority American-owned joint venture aimed at safeguarding U.S. user data and averting a ban on an app used by more than 200 million Americans.
The TikTok U.S. joint venture said in a court filing that it requires all users to enter their date of birth and that it developed age-moderation systems to identify children under 13 who misrepresent their age.