YouTube News

Neal Mohan rejected Meta's teen safety push for YouTube

Meta asked rivals to match settlement-driven safeguards after TikTok removed its advocacy ads from the app.

Neal Mohan said in an interview that YouTube would not add the teen safety measures Meta has asked rival platforms to match. Meta pitched those tools as a possible industry standard after it agreed last month to pay about $17 billion to settle claims from state attorneys general over youth mental health on Facebook and Instagram.

Under the deal, Meta committed to features including a night mode that limits young users overnight and a switch that silences notifications during school hours. The settlement terms can expand if other major platforms adopt comparable safeguards. Meta ran advertising that called on TikTok and YouTube to follow its lead.

TikTok removed those Meta ads from its service and said the appeals counted as political speech outside its ad rules.

Mohan said YouTube had spent years building protections for young people and would keep refining its own toolkit rather than copying Meta's list. "We're a very different platform," he said.

Recent YouTube additions include age-verification technology and third-party ratings that score potential harm to vulnerable users. Mohan spoke Wednesday after YouTube's Made On product event.