YouTube Tightens Policies on Firearms 
This week, without much fanfare, YouTube updated its firearm policies to age-restrict content featuring 3D-printed guns and automatic weapons. These changes follow research from CfA’s Tech Transparency Project (TTP) which revealed that YouTube was recommending real firearms videos to accounts registered as young boys, none of whom had expressed interest in this content. Instead, the accounts had been “trained” on playlists of clips from video games, watching them the way actual children would. The videos recommended by YouTube included weapons modification tutorials and dramatized reenactments of school shootings. When the test accounts clicked on these videos, YouTube began serving them more and more violent content, none of which was age restricted. 
 
In response to TTP’s report, the organization Everytown for Gun Safety urged YouTube to age restrict firearms content and enforce its existing policies, which were being openly violated by channels using the platform to sell weapons or weapon accessories. Later, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called on YouTube to stop recommending 3D-printed gun videos to children.  
 
YouTube’s old firearms policies were primarily concerned with preventing gun sales and stopping the circulation of particularly harmful videos, such as tutorials for weapons manufacturing and the conversion of weapons to automatic fire. The new policies finally acknowledge that content featuring firearms can be inappropriate for children, and represent a shift in YouTube’s approach to weapons content. Age restrictions may ultimately reduce viewership, which reduces ad revenue for YouTube – a trade-off that many online platforms are unwilling to make without significant outside pressure.