TikTok Experimented With Users’ Algorithms. One Died By Suicide

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Sarah Holder** (0:08)
Before we start, I want to let you know, we talk about suicide and self-harm in this episode. Please take care while listening.

**Olivia Carville** (0:16)
Chase was a normal kid. He was an honors student, he was a football star, loved hanging out with his friends.

**Sarah Holder** (0:26)
Chase Nasca was a 16-year-old boy who grew up on Long Island.

**Olivia Carville** (0:30)
He loved going to the gym, he loved weightlifting, he did his homework. He was just a normal kid, a kid who would connect with his friends on social media.

**Sarah Holder** (0:41)
Chase would go on TikTok and watch videos about weightlifting and basketball, motivational speeches, funny clips.

**Olivia Carville** (0:48)
That's the kind of stuff he was searching for, that's just not what the algorithm fed him.

**Sarah Holder** (0:54)
Chase also used the app to listen to songs about loneliness, hopelessness. In the winter of 2022, his feed took a turn, serving him more and more content in that vein.

**Olivia Carville** (1:06)
This is video after video after video about depression, sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, self-harm, and suicide.

**Sarah Holder** (1:17)
Chase's TikTok was stuck in a dark loop. The videos he shared with his friends got sadder. And in February of 2022, Chase died by suicide. His parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against TikTok the next year.
Bloomberg investigative reporter Olivia Carville wrote a story about Chase for Businessweek in 2023 In response to questions from Businessweek at the time, a TikTok spokesperson said that it didn't comment on pending litigation but that the company was committed to the safety of its users, especially teens, and that it would continue their significant investment in safeguarding our platform.
For the past several years, across the US, thousands of suits have been filed against the world's biggest social media companies, alleging that the platforms have harmed the mental health of young people. These cases have been filed by school districts, families like the NASCAs and by state attorneys general. And last week, on August 26th, one of the most consequential of these cases, against Meta, reached a historic settlement.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:27)
Facebook has agreed to a landmark $17 billion settlement.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:31)
trial over teen social media addiction and settled claims filed by 47 states.

**Sarah Holder** (2:37)
Olivia says the Meta settlement could mark a sea change for the social media industry and bring some of the accountability people like Chase's parents and many other families have been pushing for.

**Olivia Carville** (2:49)
They've been telling me they're screaming into the wind. No one's listening. They've been calling for Congress to roll out laws, and we finally saw change through the justice system, which is remarkable. This litigation has been going on for half a decade, and August 26th was a huge moment for so many people.

**Sarah Holder** (3:13)
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, how did Chase Nasca's TikTok feed change so significantly? Bloomberg investigative reporter Olivia Carville on the consequences of a TikTok algorithmic experiment, and how Meta's landmark settlement could spark broader changes for how social media platforms approach safety for young people.
TikTok is famous for its powerful algorithm. It learns what videos users like to see and shows them more of them. And a few years ago, that algorithm was under a microscope.

**Olivia Carville** (3:56)
So back in the summer of 2021, the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets started investigating TikTok's algorithm because it was so mysterious. And what these reporters started to uncover is that users who were interested in things like healthy eating, or excessive exercise, or fitness, started to get pushed content that was more and more extreme. So healthy eating turned to eating disordered content, or posts about breakups, or sadness over a relationship breakdown turns to self-harm videos.

**Sarah Holder** (4:30)
Some users were getting caught in something called a filter bubble. Essentially, an echo chamber of content that could be as benign as cat videos, or much more harmful.

**Olivia Carville** (4:42)
And so the company was under scrutiny for these filter bubbles. In the summer of 21, by the end of that year, they announced they're going to start testing ways to break up repetitive streams of videos about harmful content, like loneliness or extreme dieting.

**Sarah Holder** (4:58)
But this month, Olivia reported on a confidential internal document produced by TikTok back in 2023 that was turned over to lawyers as part of a legal case against the company and placed under a court-ordered seal. The document revealed that those changes to TikTok's algorithm did not go out to all users.

**Olivia Carville** (5:20)