YouTube shows gun videos to minors despite age restrictions, alarming report shows

Google-owned YouTube service continues to show gun-related videos to minors despite allegedly tightening restrictions, according to a worrying report from a regulator released Wednesday.

YouTube updated its gun policies effective June 18 to introduce age restrictions on the “use of homemade firearms, automatic firearms, and certain firearm accessories.” However, videos that violated the policies were still accessible to minors earlier this month, an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project found.

A YouTube test account created for a fictitious 14-year-old was presented with videos that should have been blocked under the policy. YouTube's search autocomplete feature, which suggests possible searches to users, “also alerted a minor to prohibited weapon content,” the TTP report said.

Videos featured on the account included Glock “switches” that transform a semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic weapon, 3D-printed weapons called “ghost guns,” and homemade silencers, such as a pistol “fired using a plastic soda bottle taped to the barrel of the gun.”

“YouTube may have generated some positive headlines by promising to restrict certain types of gun content for minors, but TTP's research shows that these changes are not being implemented effectively,” the TTP said in a blog post.

The investigation emerged during a time of heightened attention on Capitol Hill focused on Big Tech's failure to protect children online. Last month, the Senate voted to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, which imposes a legal duty of care on 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 represent a restriction on freedom of expression.

When contacted, YouTube said it is currently reviewing the report and has already taken action by age-restricting some videos that featured automatic firearms. The company has also removed some videos that facilitated the sale of prohibited gun accessories and taken down other videos that violated YouTube's advertising policies.

Enforcement and detection of videos that violate age restriction policies will be improved over time, the company added.

“We have a set of policies that govern what types of firearms content can appear and monetize on YouTube, as well as policies around what young viewers can see,” YouTube spokesman Javier Hernandez said in a statement. “And we update these over time to reflect the current situation, as we did earlier this year.”

The TTP conducted its tests on August 7. The researchers used an account in a private Google Chrome browser with no previous search history.

To test the restrictions on gun videos, researchers entered relevant search terms to display Google's autofill suggestions and then clicked “Enter” to view the full results.

When we followed Google's suggested search for the term “Glock switch,” the top result was a video titled “G17 with drum and switch” with a heart-eyes emoji that had been viewed nearly a million times.

In its tests, TTP says it found only one example of a video for Glock switches that displayed the message “Sorry, this content is age-restricted.”

“This was the only time during this investigation that YouTube has placed any barriers to viewing age-restricted gun content,” the group said.