Whistleblowers have revealed how Meta and TikTok prioritized engagement over safety, allowing harmful content to proliferate across their platforms. Internal research showed outrage drove engagement, leading engineers to be instructed to permit more "borderline" harmful content including misogyny and conspiracy theories. A Meta engineer reported being told it was because "the stock price is down" as the company competed with TikTok's explosive growth.

TikTok employees demonstrated how political cases were deliberately prioritized over reports of harmful content featuring children. Internal dashboards showed a political figure mocked by being compared to a chicken received higher priority than a 17-year-old victim of cyberbullying and a 16-year-old in Iraq whose sexualized images were shared without consent. Meta's Instagram Reels launched in 2020 with insufficient safeguards, resulting in significantly higher prevalence of bullying and hate speech.

A teenager described being "radicalized by algorithm" from age 14 after the platform showed him content that fueled anger and led to racist and misogynistic views. Engineers admitted they have limited control over the "black box" algorithms, with TikTok's Ruofan Ding comparing their work to building an engine while expecting another team to handle braking. Despite companies' public claims about safety, whistleblowers revealed the reality of content moderation differs substantially from public statements.