A landmark court case battling social media ‘addiction’ resumed on Monday, February 23rd with the YouTube Vice President of Engineering insisting that the Alphabet-owned company’s goal was to provide value to users, rather than hooking them into harmful binge-viewing habits.
Cristos Goodrow was called to defend the company’s self-styled “big, hairy, audacious goal.” Set more than a decade ago after the restructuring of Google, the objective was to increase viewer time to more than a billion hours a day by 2016.
Last week Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified in the same Los Angeles courtroom. As before, the plaintiff’s legal representative told jurors that executive compensation increased alongside the company’s share price, meaning Goodrow profited personally from ramping up user engagement.
The embattled Alphabet/YouTube VP argued that features such as sleep timers and “take a break” prompts were designed with users’ welfare in mind.
As attorney Mark Lanier outlined company documents indicating that viewer engagement was a priority for performance at the platform, Goodrow replied
YouTube is not designed to maximize watch time.… It’s designed to give people the most value.
