Mar. 26, 2022 – TikTok Inc.’s $1.1 million privacy settlement to resolve claims that it collected data for children without parental consent won the approval of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The lawsuit claimed that the company unlawfully allowed children under the age of 13 to access the site without parental consent. The settlement administrator received a total of 193,928 claimants. Each claimant is expected to receive about $3.
The settlement class comprises anyone in the U.S. who, prior to the settlement’s effective date and while under the age of 13, registered for or used used the Musical.ly or TikTok apps.
Judge John Robert Blakey declined to award an objector’s counsel any attorneys’ fees for his efforts to improve the deal. The objector sought credit for negotiating a modified release that allowed some class members to obtain a double recovery, but that agreement was negotiated separately by the defendants in related multidistrict litigation, Blakey said.
The class is represented by Mason LLP.
The case is T.K. v. Bytedance Tech. Co. Ltd., No. 1:19-cv-07915 (N.D. Ill., Mar. 25., 2022).
