Findings show YouTube suppressed internal warnings, manipulated advocacy organizations, killed safety features, and auto-deleted internal communications
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the heels of a landmark verdict finding YouTube negligent for its addictive and predatory social media products, The Tech Oversight Project today released the following report, entitled “YouTube: Addiction Inc.” The report analyzes newly unsealed documents from the social media addictions that implicate YouTube senior executives and engineers and shows that the Big Tech giant suppressed internal warnings, manipulated third- party advocacy organizations, killed safety features on ROI grounds, and auto-deleted internal communications to minimize its discoverable footprint. The report includes relevant screenshots, docket numbers, and analysis that point out the rank hypocrisy of YouTube and its parent company, Google.
“YouTube’s posture in court is that they aren’t a social media platform, but their own executives don’t even buy that theory,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project. “These explosive documents show that YouTube set out to deliberately addict children and teens because it produced more screen time to deliver ads and more data to funnel into Google’s surveillance business. They see our kids as pawns to make their next trillion dollars, and it’s past time that we break this noxious status quo. We need to pass the Senate’s version of the Kids Online Safety Act to make sure that Big Tech can no longer bank billions at the expense of children and teens’ health and well-being.”
Key Findings:
- Sleep Safety Features Killed Due to Low ROI
- Infinite Feed Identified as Direct Cause of Teen Sleep Displacement
- Digital Wellbeing ‘Not Well Aligned’ with Daily Usage Goals
- YouTube ‘Falls Behind Most Popular Social Media Platforms’
- Paid PTA ‘Editorial’ with Manipulated Safety Language
- Responsibility Team Kept Chat ‘History Off’ — Evidence Spoliation
- Internal Tracking: 32 Million Young Users in ‘Habitual Heavy Use
- Platform Designed with ‘Tricks’ for Dopamine ‘Quick Fix’
- ‘Goal Is Not Viewership, It’s Viewer Addiction’
- YouTube Admitted Internally It Is a Social Media Platform
- Engineering a ‘New Domain’ to Bypass 70% of School Firewalls for 42 Billion Views
- Parental Controls Known to Be Defective — ‘Working As Intended’
- Privacy and Algorithmic Bias Classified as Mere ‘PR Risks’
- Keeps a Kid/Teen for Life
- Algorithms Pushing Inappropriate Content in Classrooms
