YouTube Exec Defends Billion-Hour Goal as Value, Not Addiction

Kaley was six years old when she first clicked play on YouTube. By nine, she'd joined Instagram. Then came TikTok and Snapchat. Now 20, she's sitting in a Los Angeles courtroom, claiming these platforms deliberately destroyed her mental health.

The landmark case resumed Monday with YouTube VP of Engineering Cristos Goodrow defending what sounds like a tech company's wildest dream: getting people to watch over a billion hours of video every single day by 2016. But was this "big, hairy, audacious goal" about giving users value—or hooking them like digital drug dealers?

The Billion-Hour Question

Goodrow faced a withering cross-examination from plaintiff's attorney Mark Lanier, who painted a picture of executives getting rich off user addiction. The lawyer noted that Goodrow's compensation climbed alongside YouTube's share price—meaning more user engagement literally meant more money in his pocket.

"YouTube is not designed to maximize time," Goodrow insisted, even as internal company documents showed viewer engagement was a key performance metric. "It's designed to give people the most value."

But the courtroom evidence tells a more complex story. Internal YouTube documents revealed the company was aware of external research showing harmful effects from excessive video watching—yet continued prioritizing engagement metrics that kept users scrolling.

The Autoplay Trap

Lanier methodically walked through YouTube's feature rollouts: autoplay for videos, autoplay for ads, and YouTube Kids—a version specifically designed for children. He argued these created a "treadmill of continuous checking" that trapped users in endless content loops.

The timing wasn't coincidental. These features emerged as YouTube faced intense pressure to compete with Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms for users' increasingly fragmented attention. The question isn't whether these features increased engagement—they clearly did. The question is whether that engagement crossed the line into exploitation.

Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in the same courtroom, expressing regret about his company's slow progress in identifying underage Instagram users. Plaintiff attorneys hammered both companies for allegedly targeting children with sophisticated psychological manipulation techniques.

Beyond Individual Responsibility

This case represents the first major test of whether tech platforms can be held legally responsible for mental health impacts. Thousands of similar lawsuits are waiting in the wings, blaming social media for an epidemic of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicide among young people.

The defense will likely argue that correlation isn't causation—that social media use coincides with, rather than causes, mental health problems. They'll point to parental responsibility, individual choice, and the genuine benefits these platforms provide: education, connection, and creative expression.

But Kaley's story—starting YouTube at six, Instagram at nine—raises uncomfortable questions about meaningful consent. Can a child truly choose to engage with algorithms designed by teams of behavioral scientists and data engineers?

The Regulatory Ripple Effect

The trial's outcome will reverberate far beyond this Los Angeles courtroom. European regulators are already implementing stricter controls on tech platforms, while U.S. lawmakers debate everything from age verification requirements to algorithmic transparency mandates.

For investors, the stakes are enormous. Alphabet and Meta have built trillion-dollar valuations on engagement-driven advertising models. If courts find these models inherently harmful to users—especially children—the entire foundation of social media economics could crumble.

The trial continues through late March, with Kaley expected to testify as early as Tuesday. TikTok and Snapchat, also named in the original complaint, settled with the plaintiff before trial—perhaps recognizing the risks of defending their algorithms in open court.