A historic trial on social media addiction resumed on Monday with a YouTube executive insisting that the Google-owned company's goal is to provide value to users, not to make them addicted to excessive viewing. So, what should you know about it?
YouTube's vice president was defending this back in 2016
YouTube's Vice President of Engineering, Cristos Goodrow, was pressed to defend the company's " big, hairy, audacious goal " more than a decade ago, which was to increase watch time to more than one billion hours per day by 2016.
As happened last week when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in the same court in Los Angeles, plaintiffs' attorney Mark Lanier told jurors that Goodrow's compensation increased in line with his company's stock price, meaning he personally benefited from increased user engagement.
“YouTube is not designed to maximise watch time,” Goodrow replied when shown an internal company document that showed viewer engagement as the platform’s performance priority.
“It is designed to give people the best value...”
In response, Lanier asked Goodrow to detail the addition of features such as viewing recommendations, video auto-play and ads, as well as a version of YouTube specifically for kids. The lawyer said the effort pushes users into a “ constant checking treadmill ” for new content. Goodrow insisted that "we don't want anyone to get addicted to anything" when pressed about YouTube features designed to keep viewers watching.
He also rejected attempts to equate YouTube with social networks such as Facebook or Snapchat, emphasising that the platform is not a space for friends to connect or share temporary messages. According to Goodrow, continuous scrolling by users is perceived as failure, not success.
"We want people to be able to watch what they want as quickly as possible every time," he told the jury.
“If they keep scrolling, they will get frustrated.”
He added that the heavy scrolling also indicates that YouTube's recommendation software is not working properly. Lanier also referred to an internal YouTube document that cited external studies on the adverse effects of watching videos for too long.
Goodrow agrees that children shouldn't lose sleep watching YouTube, and explains that's why the platform is introducing features like viewing timers and reminders to take breaks.
Kaley is expected to testify
The trial is scheduled to last until the end of March, when a jury will determine whether Meta and YouTube are responsible for the mental health problems experienced by Kaley GM, a 20-year-old California resident who has been actively using social media since childhood.
Moreover, Kaley started using YouTube at the age of six, Instagram at the age of nine, and then TikTok and Snapchat. He is expected to testify this week, possibly as early as Tuesday, according to his lawyer.
Zuckerberg last week said he regretted Meta's delay in identifying underage users on Instagram, as the plaintiffs' legal team criticised the company for allegedly deliberately targeting children.
Furthermore, the trial is the first in a series of lawsuits filed by families in the United States against social media platforms, and will determine whether Google and Meta intentionally designed the platforms to encourage compulsive use among young people.
Moreover, this case is expected to become a benchmark for thousands of lawsuits blaming social media for contributing to the rise in cases of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and suicide. TikTok and Snapchat, which were also named in the complaint, settled with the plaintiffs before the trial began.
Stay tuned to TechNave.com for more updates like this.
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