Exclusive | DOJs sweetheart $400M settlement with TikTok puzzles DC insiders: How did you get to that number?

The Justice Department’s $400 million deal to settle TikTok child privacy allegations has puzzled Beltway insiders over its easy terms and an unusual lack of transparency around the resolution to the blockbuster case, The Post has learned.In an Aug.

21 press release on a Friday afternoon — a classic window used for announcements that hope to get ignored by the media — the DOJ disclosed its truce with TikTok to settle claims it broke federal law by collecting data on kids younger than 13 in exchange for a $300 million payout.To the surprise of sources briefed on the talks, the DOJ also agreed to vacate a 2019 consent order that required TikTok — controlled by Beijing-based Bytedance until January of this year — to undergo strict monitoring of its data practices for another $100 million.In most cases involving the potential end of a consent decree, federal agencies follow a “formal process” that includes detailed explanations about how payments were calculated, said Bill Kovacic, a Republican-appointed Federal Trade Commission chairman from 2008 to 2009.“How did you get to that number? There’s probably some assumption that there were a given number of violations,” Kovacic told The Post.

“Each violation has usually a penalty attached to it.If this were a math exam, show your work.

Ordinarily, the public is owed an explanation for that.”The $400 million settlement looks especially skimpy after a coalition of state attorneys general secured an $18 billion deal with Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta last Wednesday in a similar case — including daily time limits on children’s social media use.Fines for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA) can run up to $53,088 per infraction.The DOJ did not disclose the specifics as to how it arrived at the $400 million settlement when penalties might have otherwise risen to tens of billions of dollars.That’s despite the fact that such deals are typically “made available for public comment�...