Policy & Regulation
Senators demand TikTok answers over safeguard-disabling experiment tied to teen's death
Two US senators gave TikTok until September 1 to answer 13 questions about an experiment that disabled a safety feature for 15 million US users, including a 16-year-old who later died by suicide.
Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Chew and Adam Presser, CEO of the company’s U.S. business, calling TikTok’s decision to run the experiment “depraved.” Bloomberg reported that TikTok intentionally disabled an algorithmic safeguard for 10% of U.S. users — creating a control group — to determine whether the safeguard, designed to prevent users from being overwhelmed by harmful content, made the app less engaging.
One person in the control group was 16-year-old Chase Nasca, whose algorithm fed him thousands of videos about sadness, suicide, and loneliness up until he died by suicide. The senators are demanding answers to 13 questions about the experiment, including the names of every employee who knew about it, why TikTok allowed minors to be part of the control group, and a list of every algorithmic experiment in the U.S. where the social network disabled or delayed a safety feature. TikTok has until September 1 to respond; the company did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Why it matters
The demand puts TikTok’s internal experimentation practices under direct congressional scrutiny, testing how far lawmakers can push platforms to disclose when and why they’ve turned off safety features specifically to measure their effect on engagement.