Today's Business Headlines: 03/27/26
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., 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 confirmed that the email was authentic but dodged responsibility, claiming that staffers were discussing a “video creation app” that “wasn’t event built for viewers.” The next portion of the exchange between Harding and the attorney is redacted.for fueling social media addiction in a separate landmark case brought in California state court on behalf of a 20-year-old woman known as KGM.Mayor Mamdani’s budget mess is creating chaos in the NYC bond market Disgraced Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes just caught a break in court — and prosecutors aren’t happy The shock revelations from the Oakland federal case contradict public statements from executives who have claimed the app was never meant to be addictive and any harmful outcomes for kids are due to third-party content rather than its intentional app design choices. During the state trial last month, YouTube executive Cristos Goodrow testified that the app was “not designed to maximize time” and the company doesn’t “want anybody to be addicted.”recounting study findings that “excessive video watching is related to addiction” and that it results in a “’quick fix’ of dopamine.’”The presentation even includes a colorful flow chart labeled “addiction cycle,” complete with arrows showing how “guilt” is an “emotional trigger” that leads to “craving, ritual and using.” “Researchers feel that YT is built with the intention of being addictive,” the document said. “Designed with tricks to encourage binge-watching Viewer Wellbeing and Safety,” YouTube employees admitted that the app’s “infinite feed” was a big part of the problem. Employees wrote that the app’s “two biggest challenges” were video recommendations that “normalize unhealthy beliefs or behaviors” and “prolonged” use that was “displacing valuable activities like time with friends or sleep.” “These concerns are loudest on short form content due to its lack of depth and infinite feed experience,” the document said. The documents, which range from 2012 through 2025, were unsealed in late February and compiled by the Tech Oversight Project, an online watchdog group that has emerged as one of Big Tech’s most vocal critics.“YouTube’s posture in court is that they aren’t a social media platform but their own executives don’t even buy that theory,” said the group’s executive director, Sacha Haworth. “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,” Haworth said in a statement. “They see our kids as pawns to make their next trillion dollars, and it’s past time that we break this noxious status quo.”“It was something we looked into…but it generally just wasn’t as high a ROI compared to some of the other projects,” a YouTube project manager replied. Elsewhere, in a 2019 “strategy offsite” presentation, employees wrote that YouTube’s goal of “driving more frequent daily usage is not well aligned with our efforts to improve digital wellbeing.”, James Beser, a senior YouTube executive focused on child safety, admitted that his team would keep “history off” in internal chatrooms – a move he claimed was intended to assist “junior folks” who would sometimes reread them and “take things out of context.” A plaintiffs’ attorney pressed Beser on whether “anybody senior” at YouTube had ever instructed him to turn off history on his chats.The “history off” issue had popped up in other high-profile lawsuits involving Google. Multiple federal judges have ripped Google for destroying chat logs that should have been preserved, including US District Judge James Donato, whoA Los Angeles jury ordered Google and fellow defendant Meta last week to pay a combined $6 million in damages, with the YouTube parent responsible for 30% of the penalty and the Facebook and Instagram parent responsible for the other 70%.Radical fraud busting campaign to see tipsters rewarded with huge bountiesArnold Schwarzenegger’s look-alike son, Joseph Baena, wins first bodybuilding competitionDistrict Court, N.D. CaliforniaStream It Or Skip It: 'Jo Nesbø's Detective Hole' On Netflix, Where A Troubled Detective Tracks Down A Serial Killer Who Is Terrorizing Oslo
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