YouTube seems to have designed its website with the intention of addiction, court documents reveal.
New court documents surfaced show YouTube's employees discussing their website and algorithm design for purposeful viewer addiction. Something which they vehemently denied in the past.
"[The] Goal Is Not Viewership, It’s Viewer Addiction"
Multiple social media platforms are currently part of a legal battle regarding their impact on children. Multiple lawsuits accuse the platforms of deliberately designing features for maximal engagement, not regarding viewer health.
The New York Post now reviewed court documents that show employees admitting that their goal was “viewer addiction” and denying proposed safety tools for kids intended to protect them, because they wouldn’t provide a sufficient “return on investment".
In one incident, an email from an unnamed YouTube employee got reviewed that said that the "goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction". A YouTube executive confirmed the logs to be authentic but denied blame by insisting that they were referring to a "video creation app", not intended for viewers.
A federal case from Oakland recently revealed an internal YouTube presentation from April 2018 that explicitly links excessive video consumption to addiction and emphasizes the "quick fix" of dopamine.
The documents state that researchers believe the platform itself was built with this addictive intent with features like autoplay and endless recommendations contributing to or even causing addictive behavior. These are the two main issues according to the documents: the recommendation systems that "normalize unhealthy beliefs or behaviors" and extended usage that “displaces valuable activities like time with friends or sleep”.
The revelations emerging from the Oakland federal case stand in stark contrast to executives' previous public assertions that the app was not designed to be addictive and that any negative effects on children result solely from third-party content rather than intentional design features.
The documents were compiled by watchdog group the Tech Oversight Project and made public in February. The group's executive director Sacha Haworth said in a statement:
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.
Meta and Google have already been found guilty in a different lawsuit regarding addiction. On March 25, the companies behind Instagram and YouTube were found liable for $3 million in compensatory damages for the harm caused to the young woman who sued the companies for implementing addictive features, which were why she was dangerously obsessed with the apps from a young age, she claims. The jury also awarded $3 million in punitive damages. This case is seen by many as the floodgate that now could lead to a wider crackdown of Big Tech, that have now lost their air of invincibility. The consequences for the companies and also for the websites and viewers remains to be seen.
