US senators slam TikTok’s ‘depraved’ experiment

Two US senators have sent a letter to TikTok executives in that jurisdiction asking for information about an experiment the company ran that withheld a safety feature from millions of users, including a teenager who died by suicide.

Senators Marsha Blackburn (Republican, Tennessee) and Richard Blumenthal (Democrat Connecticut), who are co-sponsors of an online child safety bill, called TikTok’s decision to conduct the test “depraved”.

"We write regarding disgusting new reports that TikTok knowingly withheld a critical safety measure for millions of American users, including children, in order to determine whether protecting users would impact its financial bottom line.

“These revelations raise serious questions about TikTok's repeated assurances to Congress, parents, and the American public that it prioritises the safety and well-being of young people over profit," the four-page letter begins.

Bloomberg report

The existence of the experiment, discussed in detail in a confidential 2023 company document, was reported by Bloomberg Businessweek this month.

The senators followed up the Bloomberg report by writing the letter to TikTok Inc chief executive officer Shou Chew, and Adam Presser, chief executive of the company’s Culver City, California-based US spin-off.

The TikTok document, handed over in litigation against the world’s biggest social-media companies and placed under a court-ordered seal, shows the company intentionally switched off an algorithmic safeguard from 10% of US users, turning them into a control group.

The algorithmic safeguard was designed to break up “online echo chambers of harmful content”, the LA Times reports.

At the time, that control group consisted of 15 million TikTok users.

One was 16-year-old Chase Nasca, of Bayport, New York.

The teen’s account, the document said, was then fed thousands of videos about sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, and suicide right up until he killed himself.

Teen ‘randomly selected’

Chase was randomly selected for the algorithm experiment on 25 January, 2022.

Within a month, he was dead.

The document then explains why Chase’s account received what it called an “onslaught” of dark content: “TikTok’s filter bubble prevention strategies did not take effect on this user, by design.”

The document explains why the company turned off the safety setting for some: “The user impact decision was a delicate balance across safety and the ability to measure impact on DAU (daily active users) and core metrics.”

TikTok didn’t respond to a request for comment about the letter.

But in a statement for the Bloomberg Businessweek story, a TikTok spokesman said the company was “deeply committed to the safety and well-being of users,” especially teens.

In their letter to TikTok, Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn pointed out that Congress had raised concerns about TikTok’s algorithm driving young users toward harmful content since October 2021.

This was before the company engaged in the filter bubble prevention strategy experiment.

'Sinister'

The senators write that the revelations “are made even more sinister because TikTok was on notice about the effects of its recommendation algorithms on children.”

The senators demanded answers to 13 questions, including:

• Names of every employee informed of the experiment,
• Explanation for why the company permitted minors to be included in the test,
• Details on when executives learned about the experiment, and
• A complete, unredacted version of the document reported on by Bloomberg Businessweek.

They senators also asked for a list of every algorithmic experiment in the US where TikTok had disabled or reduced a safety feature, the number of users involved, and how many were minors.

The senators gave a deadline of 1 September for response.

“The fact that they did this knowingly and that they used their users as an experiment is something that just seems inconceivable,” Senator Blackburn said.

Children as products

“It shows you how, when our children are on these social media platforms, they are the products.”

Senator Blackburn told reporters that the experiment was a clear example of a company prioritising “making money and capturing eyeballs” over safety.

“Look at the fact that this was a happy, 16-year-old boy with no mental-health issues and then, over this short window of time, the impact of feeding video after video after video and post after post after post about depression and suicide and what it did to this child.

“It is frightening, and this is something that these platforms need to be held to account for.”

Republican Gus Bilirakis (Forida) said the report was deeply troubling and demonstrated the “devastating consequences that can occur when engagement metrics and corporate profits are prioritised over the safety and well-being of our children”.

During a hearing in March 2023, weeks after the confidential document was created, Bilirakis had questioned TikTok chief executive Chew about Chase Nasca and said: “Your technology is literally leading to death.”

Chew responded, saying that the company took these issues “very seriously” and provided mental-health resources to users who searched for suicide content.

Blackburn co-authored with Blumenthal the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

The bill failed in the House of Representatives in 2024 but was reintroduced this legislative session.

Bilirakis championed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, which includes most of the Senate bill, as well as laws for AI chatbots and video games.

Duty-of-care provision

It passed in the House in June but a so-called duty-of-care provision was removed from the Senate’s version, over first-amendment concerns.

On 5 August, the day after the Businessweek story was published, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted to advance the original, revived KOSA, with the duty-of-care provision.