Subpoena TikTok’s CEO Over Deadly Teen Safety Experiment

TikTok allegedly withheld a critical safety feature from millions of users — including minors — to see whether protecting them would hurt engagement and profits.

According to a bipartisan Senate letter, TikTok developed “filter bubble prevention strategies” meant to reduce repeated exposure to harmful content like sadness, loneliness, extreme dieting, suicide, and self-harm. But instead of rolling those protections out to everyone, TikTok reportedly kept them from a control group of roughly 15 million Americans.

That group included minors. One of them was 16-year-old Chase Nasca, who was reportedly placed into an experiment where TikTok’s safety protections “did not take effect” by design. In the weeks before his death by suicide, TikTok reportedly served him thousands of videos involving sadness, hopelessness, loneliness, suicide, and self-harm.

Congress cannot let TikTok answer this with another round of vague promises and public relations talking points. Lawmakers must subpoena TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, force the company to turn over unredacted internal records, and expose who approved this experiment.

Tell Congress: subpoena TikTok’s CEO and demand the truth about why minors were denied safety protections on one of the most powerful platforms in the world.

TikTok was already on notice before this is disturbing new revelation. Senators had questioned the company about its recommendation algorithm and its impact on children before this experiment reportedly took place. Yet the company allegedly went forward with withholding protections from users in order to measure engagement, retention, revenue, and other business metrics.

Parents deserve to know whether TikTok used their children as test subjects. Young people deserve platforms that protect them from algorithmic spirals of harmful content. And the public deserves to know whether TikTok executives put profit ahead of kids’ lives.

Add your name now and demand Congress subpoena TikTok’s CEO, release the records, and hold the company accountable.

The petition to Congress reads:

"Subpoena TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, require TikTok to provide complete and unredacted records about experiments that withheld safety protections from minors, and hold the company accountable for putting teen safety at risk in pursuit of engagement and profit."