TikTok Safety Feature Investigation

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

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You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:14)
We do want to get to a Bloomberg Businessweek exclusive, original reporting. It's on a story about a confidential document that says kept a safety feature from millions of TikTok users, about 15 million, by design, as part of an experiment. One of those users died by suicide. There is a lot of careful reporting here to get to the story by the award-winning and recognized Bloomberg News investigative reporter, Olivia Carville. She joins us here on set. This story, by the way, is also today's Bloomberg big take.
Olivia, good to have you here. This story is about a document. What is this document? What does it tell us?

**Olivia Carville** (0:51)
Thank you so much for having me on.
So I think it's important to have context around this document. And for that, we've got to go back in time. Early 2022, a 16-year-old boy from Long Island took his own life. He died by suicide. After this happened, his mom, who didn't understand, went searching through his social media accounts, trying to find like a sense of what had happened to him. When she found his TikTok account, she was shocked by the fact that the algorithm was sending him nonstop, distressing, depressing videos, many of them encouraging suicide.
A year later, I reach out to the company because I'm writing a story about this young boy and the way the algorithm was sending him so much sad content. I asked the company what had happened to chase NASCAR's account? Why is the algorithm sending him all of these videos about suicide? That sparked an internal review at TikTok. It's an extraordinary review where they do a deep dive into his watch history, what he was seeing in the weeks, days and hours before he died. That review is what is contained within this confidential document.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:01)
Tell us more about Chase. Who is he?

**Olivia Carville** (2:04)
Chase was a 16-year-old boy from Long Island. He was a high school junior, an elite athlete, really good at swimming, really good at soccer. He had a big group of friends. He had no mental health issues. There was no depression, no anxiety. In his background, he was an honors student. There was no warning shots that there was a concern with his own mental health.
His death was a mystery to his friends, to his family. But what happened in January of 2022 is that this young teenage boy started sharing very dark videos on TikTok with his friends, videos about suicide. They didn't understand why he was sharing this content, and it happened very quickly. And this document tells us why.

**Carol Massar** (2:51)
What does it tell us?

**Olivia Carville** (2:52)
It tells us that this teenage boy's account, this very normal teenage boy, was pushed into a filter bubble of suicide and self-harm content. That's like an online echo chamber where he is repetitively recommended depressing, sad videos, many of them encouraging suicide, and it tells us why he was pushed into that filter bubble.

**Carol Massar** (3:16)
So let's go there. Why was he pushed into this so-called filter bubble?

**Olivia Carville** (3:21)
So again, if we go back in time, in early 2022, TikTok has realized that these filter bubbles can be quite harmful for its users. And at this point, TikTok has 150 million American users. They want to make the platform safer. So they design a feature to break up repetitive videos about the same topic. So rather than getting sad video, sad video, sad video, you get sad video, funny video, happy video, silly video. They want to break up those filter bubbles. So they roll out this feature, which they call a filter bubble prevention strategy, but they hold back 10% of US users. That's one of the most important figures in this document. They withhold 15 million Americans from this safeguard because they want to test engagement. They want to understand how this safety feature is going to impact how long you stay logged on for.

**Carol Massar** (4:15)
So this group that they held back who didn't get essentially the safety feature, right? That was their control group?

**Olivia Carville** (4:21)
That was their control group.

**Carol Massar** (4:22)
So this was an experiment?

**Olivia Carville** (4:23)
This was an experiment. In their own words in this document, they refer to it as an experiment. And Chase Nesca was in that control group.

**Tim Stenovec** (4:36)
Go ahead, Carol.

**Carol Massar** (4:37)
Well, one thing I want to ask, because you and I have talked about this story and have read it, and we've read it.