Google-owned YouTube has continued showing gun-related videos to minors even after it claimed to have tightened restrictions, according to an alarming watchdog report published Wednesday.
YouTube updated its firearm policy effective June 18 to implement age restrictions on the “use of homemade firearms, automatic firearms, and certain firearm accessories.” However, videos that violated the policy were still accessible to minors earlier this month, a Tech Transparency Project investigation found.
A test YouTube account set up for a fictional 14-year-old was presented with videos that should have been blocked under the policy. YouTube’s search autofill feature, which suggests potential queries to users, also “pointed a minor to restricted gun content,” according to TTP’s report.
Videos shown to the account included Glock “switches,” which can convert a semi-automatic handgun into fully automatic, 3D-printed weapons known as “ghost guns” and homemade silencers such as a handgun “firing with a plastic soda bottle duct-taped to the gun barrel.”
“YouTube may have generated some positive headlines by promising to restrict certain kinds of gun content for minors, but TTP’s research shows it is not effectively implementing these changes,” the TTP said in a blog post.
The investigation surfaced during a period of heightened scrutiny on Capitol Hill over Big Tech’s failure to keep kids safe online. Last month, the Senate voted to advance the Kids Online Safety Act, which would enact a legal duty of care for social media apps like Instagram and YouTube to crack down on harmful content.
Critics of the bill and other efforts to moderate content for minors claim that such legislation could infringe on free speech.
When reached for comment, YouTube said it is reviewing the report and has already taken action by age-restricting some videos that featured automatic firearms. The company has also taken down some videos that facilitated the sale of prohibited gun accessories and demonetized others that violated YouTube’s advertising guidelines.
Enforcement and detection of videos that violate the age-restriction policy will improve over time, the company added.
“We have a robust set of policies that govern what kinds of firearm content can appear and make money on YouTube, as well as policies regarding what young viewers can see,” YouTube spokesperson Javier Hernandez said in a statement. “And we update these over time to reflect the current landscape, as we did earlier this year.”
The TTP conducted its tests on Aug. 7. Researchers used an account on a private Google Chrome browser with no prior search history.
To test gun video restrictions, researchers plugged in relevant search terms to view Google’s autofill suggestions, then clicked “enter” to view the full results.
When following Google’s suggested search for the term “glock switch,” the top result was a video titled “G17 with a drum and switch” and a heart-eyes emoji that had nearly one million views.
In its testing, TTP said it found only one example of a video for Glock switches that produced the message: “Sorry, this content is age restricted.”
“This was the only time during this research that YouTube threw up any barrier to watching age-restricted gun content,” the group said.
