Senators give TikTok deadline over 'depraved' safety test

Two senators have given TikTok until September 1 to explain an internal experiment that kept a safety feature away from 15 million US users, including a teenager who later died by suicide.

Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal sent a four-page letter demanding answers, calling the company's decision to run the test "depraved".

This letter is sent to TikTok's CEO, Shou Chew, and Adam Presser, the CEO of TikTok USA operations.

This is because of the information from Bloomberg Businessweek on an internal confidential document from 2023.

In the Bloomberg Businessweek story, it is reported that TikTok modified its algorithm in 2021 to avoid overwhelming users with dangerous content; however, this change was not implemented for all users.

The modification was only withheld from a control group comprising 10% of American users, which totals approximately 15 million people, to determine if the safer algorithm decreases engagement in the application.

One of those users was 16-year-old Chase Nasca of Bayport, New York, who was placed in the unprotected group in January 2022.

Over the following weeks, his algorithm fed him a steady stream of videos about sadness, suicide and loneliness. He died by suicide within a month, at age 16.

The Kids Online Safety Act co-writers Blackburn and Blumenthal are pressing TikTok to provide answers to 13 different questions before September 1st.

The list of queries includes such questions as who exactly knows about the experiment within the TikTok company, what were the reasons that children remained in the control group and an exact list of all algorithmic experiments conducted in the United States with the disabling of any safety feature.

It is not the first time that Blackburn and Blumenthal have come at TikTok for the sake of children’s safety. These two have previously called for documentation following leaks of court filings and passed the Kids Online Safety Act in the Senate Commerce Committee last month, which was right after the Bloomberg report surfaced.