TikTok lawsuit settlement: Some users receiving payments up to $167

TikTok sued after 2 girls die attempting ‘blackout challenge,' lawsuit claims

The families of a 9-year-old Wisconsin girl and an 8-year-old Texas girl have filed wrongful death lawsuits against TikTok, claiming their daughters died after participating in TikTok challenges.

If a payment from TikTok has showed up in your account, it’s likely not spam: The company began issuing payments from a $92 million class action lawsuit settlement this week.

A federal lawsuit alleged that TikTok broke the Illinois biometric privacy law, which allows suits against companies that harvest consumer data without consent, including via facial and fingerprint scanning. Illinois is the only state with a law that allows people to seek monetary damages for such unauthorized data collection.

Payments start at $27.84 and go up to $167.04. In Illinois, residents are receiving $167.04, according to FOX 32 Chicago.

Bytedance Technology, TikTok’s parent company, has denied any wrongdoing, but chose to settle the lawsuit without going to trial.

Photo illustration a TikTok logo (Photo illustration by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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"While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community," TikTok told the Associated Press in February 2021.

TikTok users who created video before September 30, 2021 — about 89 million people — were eligible for a payment. They had to file a claim by March 1, 2022.

Facebook agreed to a $550 million settlement under the same law in February 2020.

In 2019, TikTok agreed to pay $5.7 million to the Federal Trade Commission over allegations the company illegally collected personal information from children.

The Associated Press and FOX 32 Chicago contributed to this report.

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