Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: So we do want to get to a Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week exclusive original reporting. It's on a story about a
Speaker 1: confidential document that says kept a safety feature from millions
Speaker 1: of TikTok users, about fifteen million by design as part
Speaker 1: of an experiment. One of those users died by suicide.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of careful reporting here to get
Speaker 1: to the story by the award winning and recognize Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News investigative reporter Olivia Carvill. She joins us here on set.
Speaker 1: The story, by the way, is also Today's Bloomberg Big Take, Olivia.
Speaker 1: Good to have you hear. This story is about a document.
Speaker 1: What is this document? What does it tell us?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me on. So I
Speaker 3: think it's important to have context around this document, and
Speaker 3: for that we've got to go back in time. Early
Speaker 3: Truthy twenty two, a sixteen year old boy from Long
Speaker 3: Island took his own life. He died by suicide. After
Speaker 3: this happened, his mum, who didn't understand when searching through
Speaker 3: his social media accounts, trying to find a sense of
Speaker 3: what had happened to him. When she found his TikTok account,
Speaker 3: she was shocked by the fact that the algorithm was
Speaker 3: sending him non stop distressing, depressing videos, many of them
Speaker 3: encouraging suicide. A year later, I reach out to the
Speaker 3: company because I'm writing a story about this young boy
Speaker 3: and the way the algorithm was sending in so much
Speaker 3: sad content, and I asked the company what had happened
Speaker 3: to Chase NASCAR's account? Why is the algorithm sending him
Speaker 3: all of these videos about suicide? That sparked an internal
Speaker 3: review at TikTok. It's an extraordinary review where they do
Speaker 3: a deep dive into his watch history, what he was
Speaker 3: seeing in the weeks, days, and hours before he died.
Speaker 3: And that review is what is contained within this confidential
Speaker 3: talk document.
Speaker 2: Tell us more about Chase.
Speaker 3: Who is he? Chase was a sixteen year old boy
Speaker 3: from Long Island. He was a high school junior, an
Speaker 3: elite athlete, really good at swimming, really good at soccer.
Speaker 3: He had a big group of friends. He had no
Speaker 3: mental health issues. There was no depression, no anxiety in
Speaker 3: his background. He was an honors student, there was no
Speaker 3: warning shots that there was a concern with his own
Speaker 3: mental health. His death was a mystery to his friends,
Speaker 3: to his family. But what happened in January of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two is that this young teenage boy started sharing
Speaker 3: very dark videos on TikTok with his friends, videos about suicide.
Speaker 3: They didn't understand why he was sharing this content, and
Speaker 3: it happened very quickly. And this document tells us why.
Speaker 1: What does it tell us?
Speaker 3: It tells us that this teenage boy's account, this very
Speaker 3: normal teenage boy, was pushed into a filter bubble of
Speaker 3: suicide and self harm content. That's like an online echo
Speaker 3: chamber where he is repetatively recommended depressing sad videos, many
Speaker 3: of them encouraging suicide. And it tells us why he
Speaker 3: was pushed into that filter bubble.
Speaker 1: So let's go there. Why was he pushed into this
Speaker 1: so called filter bubble?
Speaker 3: So again, if we go back in time in early
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, TikTok has realized that these filter bubbles
Speaker 3: can be quite harmful for its users, and at this point,
Speaker 3: TikTok is one hundred and fifty million American users. They
Speaker 3: want to make the platform safer, so they design a
Speaker 3: feature to break up repetitive videos about the same topic.
Speaker 3: So rather than getting sad video, sad video, sad video,
Speaker 3: you get sad video, funny video, happy video, silly video.
Speaker 3: They want to break up those filter bubbles, so they
Speaker 3: roll out this feature, which they call a filter bubble
Speaker 3: prevention strategy, but they hold back ten percent of US users.
Speaker 3: That's one of the most important figures in this document.
Speaker 3: They withhold fifteen million Americans from this safeguard because they
Speaker 3: want to test engagement. They want to understand how this
Speaker 3: safety feature is going to impact how long you stay
Speaker 3: logged on for.
Speaker 1: So this group that they held back who didn't get
Speaker 1: essentially the safety future, right, that was their control group.
Speaker 1: That was their control So this was an experiment.
Speaker 3: This was an experiment in their own words in this
Speaker 3: document they refer to it as an experiment, and Chase
Speaker 3: Neske was in that control group.
Speaker 2: The go ahead, Carol, Well, one.
Speaker 1: Thing I want to ask, because you and I've talked
Speaker 1: about this story and I've read it and we've read it.
Speaker 1: When they held it back in the document, TikTok says
Speaker 1: they held it back. They held back the safety future
Speaker 1: by design. Why are those two words important.
Speaker 3: Those two words are so important, Carol, because right now
Speaker 3: in US courts, there is a broad litigation ledging that
Speaker 3: social media platforms are dangerous and addictive by design, that
Speaker 3: these companies have created platforms that it engineered for addiction,
Speaker 3: that what their main goal is is to keep you
Speaker 3: logged on for as long as possible, regardless of how
Speaker 3: that may impact your mental health. And so for the
Speaker 3: first time, we're seeing a social media platform use that
Speaker 3: same language that they experimented on millions of US users,
Speaker 3: including teenagers, and that as part of that experiment, they
Speaker 3: withheld a safety feature from one of those teenage users.
Speaker 3: Quote by design, This was the company intentionally deliberately holding
Speaker 3: back that safeguard.
Speaker 1: It speaks to there is an awareness, right, that's right.
Speaker 3: It speaks to intent.
Speaker 2: I want to read the company's response that they sent
Speaker 2: in you in response to questions about the document. A
Speaker 2: TikTok spokesperson center written statement saying the company was quote
Speaker 2: deeply committed to the safety and wealth being of users,
Speaker 2: especially teams. Our hearts break for any family that experienced
Speaker 2: a tragic loss, the spokesperson said, quote to help protect
Speaker 2: our community, we continue to invest significantly in trust and safety,
Speaker 2: including robust detection systems and dedicated enforcement teams that proactively
Speaker 2: remove content that violates our community guidelines.
Speaker 1: So, Olivia, that was the company's response in the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: That was the company's response this week to this story.
Speaker 3: And it's important to point out TikTok has forty thousand
Speaker 3: people working on their trust and safety team. They have
Speaker 3: huge investments, forty thousand people working on trust and safety.
Speaker 3: More than a billion dollars is spent trying to safeguard
Speaker 3: this platform. So there are huge efforts underway to do this.
Speaker 3: But I also think what this document shows us is
Speaker 3: that sometimes these decisions are made too fast without thinking
Speaker 3: about the impact on the user.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about this and you answered this a
Speaker 2: little bit before we read the statement, but the broader
Speaker 2: trend of social media companies over the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: I mean, you and the team did a great documentary
Speaker 2: on this about the pressure that they've come under, not
Speaker 2: just from lawmakers, but also from lawsuits that have been
Speaker 2: filed on behalf of families.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was mentioning the litigation earlier, So this
Speaker 3: is thousands of lawsuits that have been filed right across
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: Can I just put a number, because then you put
Speaker 1: a number on it, you said. More than four thousand
Speaker 1: personal andury lawsuits have been filed accusing social media companies
Speaker 1: of harming children's mental health. Many, though rate have been consolidated.
Speaker 3: YEAP been consolidated into two tracks, one in state court
Speaker 3: one in federal court. In addition to those four thousand lawsuits,
Speaker 3: twelve hundred school districts have filed the same case against
Speaker 3: the social media platforms, alleging that they are addictive and
Speaker 3: that they have drained school resources on like mental health counseling.
Speaker 3: And in addition to that, we're seeing forty two state
Speaker 3: attorneys general file suit against the companies alleging the same thing.
Speaker 3: So there is massive litigation unfolding across the US right now.
Speaker 3: We saw the very first trial earlier this year where
Speaker 3: Google and Meta were held accountable for harming the mental
Speaker 3: health of a twenty year old woman, and documents like
Speaker 3: this are surfacing right now because of that litigation. These
Speaker 3: companies went through a two year discovery process and they
Speaker 3: handed over more than six million internal documents to the lawyers.
Speaker 3: So now we get a first kind of behind the
Speaker 3: scenes look at what was really happening inside the world's
Speaker 3: biggest social media platforms as they fought to grow their users.
Speaker 3: And this is an incredibly competitive space. You know, the
Speaker 3: main goal is to keep you logged on for as
Speaker 3: long as possible, and they don't want to lose users
Speaker 3: to other platforms, and so this is part of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing, right, It's about bringing more
Speaker 1: users and then also set like kind of managing against safety,
Speaker 1: like managing those two things.
Speaker 3: And what it's called in the trust and safety space, Carol,
Speaker 3: is it's a trade off, a trade off between user
Speaker 3: safety and user growth. How do we keep the platform
Speaker 3: growing as fast as it can but keep it as
Speaker 3: safe as it can be for the users. And too
Speaker 3: often the companies, according to these lawsuits and according to
Speaker 3: previous reporting, are dialing up the user growth priority and
Speaker 3: dialing back the user safety priority.
Speaker 1: It's so important in this story and I highly recommend
Speaker 1: people check it out also on the Bloomberg But you
Speaker 1: can tell in the reporting you're very careful about laying
Speaker 1: out the timeline. I just want to go back to
Speaker 1: that for a moment, because there was a congressional hearing
Speaker 1: back in March on March twenty third, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: with TikTok's CEO answering questions from lawmakers. Is that that's
Speaker 1: an important moment in time.
Speaker 3: Too hugely important for this timeline. So if we think
Speaker 3: about what's happening now that we have this document, we
Speaker 3: know that inside the company they were doing this review
Speaker 3: of Chase Nesker's account to try and understand what had
Speaker 3: happened to his account and why he was receiving so
Speaker 3: many videos about suicide. They figure out why, and that's
Speaker 3: because he had that safeguard withheld from his account. And
Speaker 3: that same month, that very same month, the CEO is
Speaker 3: testifying before Congress answering questions about child safety. And I
Speaker 3: do want to point to just one of the follow
Speaker 3: up questions that they got from Congress. They were asked, specifically,
Speaker 3: how many cases is TikTok aware of where users have
Speaker 3: committed suicide after receiving sad, depressing or suicide promoting videos.
Speaker 3: We know the company knew that it had sent those
Speaker 3: kind of videos to Chase Nascar because of this document,
Speaker 3: and this was the written response. TikTok does not believe
Speaker 3: that use of the platform has caused users to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: And again, what's key is timing in all of this,
Speaker 1: which you lay out. As he testified two weeks after
Speaker 1: that in depth review, he said, TikTok dead of Chase's account.
Speaker 3: That's right that this was in the written responses to
Speaker 3: Congress that came from the company rather than from TikTok CEO.
Speaker 3: We're not aware of whether or not he was made
Speaker 3: aware of this review, but the company responded to congressional
Speaker 3: questions and put on the record that they didn't believe
Speaker 3: that their platform had caused any users to commit suicide.
Speaker 3: And this was said after this review was conducted.
Speaker 1: As we said, laid out, and the dates and the
Speaker 1: timeline are so important, as well as some of the
Speaker 1: words that were said. Thank you so much. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it always. Bloomberg News investigative reporter Olivia Carville her
Speaker 1: full reporting. It is Today's Bloomberg Big Take. It is
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg. It can also be found at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com.