To: Neal Mohan, CEO at YouTube
From: Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate; and our supporters
Dear Mr. Mohan:
We are writing to alert you about the dangerous content that your algorithm is pushing on to young girls’ screens.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate simulated the experience of a 13-year-old girl who encounters eating disorder content online for the first time. We repeated this test 100 times, looking at the 1,000 “Up Next” video recommendations that came next. The results were horrifying.
- 1 in 3 promoted harmful eating disorder content.
- 2 in 3 related to eating disorders or weight loss.
- 1 in 20 involved self-harm or suicide content.
YouTube is the most popular platform for teens in the US, it should be a priority for your company to keep young users safe. So why is YouTube allowing harmful eating disorder, self-harm, and suicide content to reach potentially vulnerable teenagers?
What’s worse, when researchers reported content which violated YouTube’s rules against eating disorders, 81% of videos remained available on the platform.
We also found ads from major brands like Grammarly, T-Mobile and Nike appearing next to these harmful videos.
YouTube has a detailed policy against videos that promote harmful eating disorder content. The platform also claims to age-restrict content related to eating disorders to 18+ and limit repeat recommendations for this kind of content.
CCDH recognizes that discussion of these issues is sensitive, and research is ongoing. The removal of content should only be in cases where the videos are in violation of YouTube’s policies. However, for these rules to be meaningful, they must be acted on.
YouTube should provide resources and assistance to creators or users who are vulnerable to this content, rather than recommend more of it. Crisis resource panels are helpful, but if they appear on otherwise harmful videos there should be a clear and transparent process as to how they ended up in a child’s video recommendations.
Mr. Mohan, you and I both have the privilege of being fathers to young girls. Nothing is more important to me, and I am sure to you. And I believe you would agree with me that we should extend our instinct to protect all children, no matter whose they are.
YouTube must fix its algorithm and stop hurting kids.
Sincerely,
Imran Ahmed
