Senators demand answers from TikTok About ‘depraved’ experiment

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

The senators, co-sponsors of an online child safety bill, called TikTok’s decision to conduct the test “depraved.” The existence of the experiment, discussed in detail in a confidential 2023 company document, was reported by Bloomberg Businessweek this month.

It prompted the letter sent Wednesday by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal to TikTok Inc.

Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew and Adam Presser, CEO of the company’s US spinoff.

“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,” the four-page letter began.

The Businessweek story’s “appalling” revelations, the senators wrote, “raise serious questions about TikTok’s repeated assurances to Congress, parents and the American public that it prioritizes the safety and well-being of young people over profit.” Read More: TikTok Kept a Safety Feature From Millions.

One Died by Suicide 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 safeguard was designed to break up online echo chambers of harmful content.

At the time, that control group would have been approximately 15 million people.

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

His account, the document said, was fed thousands of videos about sadness, hopelessness, loneliness and suicide right up until he killed himself.

Chase was randomly selected for the algorithm experiment on Jan.

25, 2022.

Within a month, he was dead.