The Justice Department will appeal US District Judge George Wu’s refusal to approve its children’s privacy settlement with TikTok, turning down his offer to let it revise and refile the request. TikTok agreed in August to pay $400M to settle the department’s 2024 suit alleging that kids under 13 could get around the app’s “Kids Mode” data limits, but $100M of that is due only once a court vacates the 2019 consent order TikTok signed over Musical.ly’s violations of the same law. The department argued the old order no longer serves the public interest because it grew out of Musical.ly’s practices, not today’s TikTok, which is now owned by an Oracle-backed US joint venture. However, Wu wrote that the ownership change did nothing to alter TikTok’s obligations under COPPA.
