LOS ANGELES—Taking the stand in a landmark jury trial considering whether social media giants are designing their platforms to addict young people despite known harms, YouTube’s vice president of engineering testified in Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 23 that the algorithm and design features he oversees are not made to be addictive.
Referencing a cache of recently unsealed internal documents—slide presentations, research, and email chains dating back to 2011—attorneys for the plaintiff sketched a narrative of a company fiercely competing with other tech titans to “hook” young people with addictive features by exploiting “existing vulnerabilities” and driving watch time to increase profit.
