From NY Post: YouTube employees admitted that their goal was “viewer addiction” and killed proposed safety tools for kids because they wouldn’t provide a sufficient “ROI” — financial lingo for “return on investment,” according to bombshell court documents reviewed by The Post.
The explosive records, which include internal chat logs and presentations from YouTube employees, were unsealed ahead of a series of landmark trials slated for this summer in Oakland, Calif. in the US District Court of Northern California. Google-owned YouTube, Meta, Snap and TikTok are listed as defendants.
In a deposition in the case last March, John Harding, a longtime vice president of engineering at YouTube, was confronted by plaintiffs attorneys with an internal email from June 7, 2012, in which a YouTube employee, whose name was redacted, stated the “goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction.”
Harding admitted that the email was authentic, but he claimed the staffers were discussing a “video creation app” that “wasn’t even built for viewers.”
The next portion of the exchange between Harding and the attorney is redacted. The federal case is part of what legal experts and critics have called a “Big Tobacco” moment for Google and Meta.
Both companies were found liable for social media addiction in a landmark case in California state court on behalf of a 20-year-old woman known as KGM.
Read more at NY Post
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