TTP Report: YouTube Failing to Enforce New Age Restrictions on Gun Videos
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 28, 2024
Contact: Michael Clauw, mclauw@campaignforaccountability.org, 202.780.5750
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a non-profit watchdog group that runs the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), published a report revealing YouTube’s failure to enforce its new age restrictions on videos that show the “use of homemade firearms, automatic firearms, and certain firearm accessories,” more than six weeks after the company announced the policy. The policy change followed a TTP report that found YouTube recommended hundreds of videos about guns and gun violence to accounts for boys that showed interest in video games—findings that were highlighted by Everytown for Gun Safety and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in subsequent appeals to the company. Now, TTP’s latest findings raise questions about YouTube’s ability, or willingness, to protect its young users as promised.
CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said, “YouTube gained some goodwill by announcing these changes, but the poor execution of these new rules shows that any praise appears to be unearned. If YouTube wants to continue claiming that it takes the safety of its young users seriously, it needs to follow through on its own policy pronouncements.”
Using a test account set up as a 14-year-old boy, TTP researchers plugged a series of gun-related terms into the platform’s search bar and examined the platform’s search predictions and search results. TTP quickly discovered deficiencies in YouTube’s implementation of its new age restrictions, particularly with YouTube Shorts. For many searches, including “glock,” “Taurus,” “machinegun,” and “rifle,” YouTube served the 14-year-old test user a variety of the types of firearm videos YouTube said it would prevent young users from seeing. These included videos featuring homemade (3D-printed) weapons, fully automatic weapons, and those converted to automatic using “switches”, or “auto sears”—which are illegal under federal law.
The review also found that YouTube’s search predictions— the automated suggestions that pop up as a user begins typing in the YouTube search bar—explicitly pointed a minor to restricted gun content. When TTP’s 14-year-old test user searched for “glock,” YouTube gave “glock switch” as one of its top suggested searches. When the teen account followed YouTube’s suggested search for “glock switch,” the platform surfaced a series of short videos that should have been restricted for minors.
Ms. Kuppersmith continued, “Rather than helping users find what they need, YouTube search suggestions are actively putting some young users in harm’s way. It’s bad enough that the platform is hosting dangerous firearm content; it’s even worse that YouTube is actively serving it up to vulnerable young users.”
Campaign for Accountability is a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life and hold those who act at the expense of the public good accountable for their actions.