Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
YouTube's recommendation algorithm is steering children toward videos of guns and school shootings, according to a new report.
Back in 2021, YouTube’s vice president of engineering Cristos Goodrow said the company had, "made delivering responsible recommendations our top priority," claiming that its algorithms weren't steering viewers toward extreme content.
However, according to the The Campaign for Accountability's (CFA's) Tech Transparency Project (TTP), this isn't the case.
The team set up four accounts, posing as two 9-year-old boys and two 14-year-old boys, and created playlists for each that consisted entirely of gaming videos. For the younger viewers, these included Roblox, Lego Star Wars and Five Nights at Freddy’s, while the older accounts watched videos of first-person shooter games like Grand Theft Auto, Halo and Red Dead Redemption.
Researchers then logged and analyzed the videos that YouTube’s algorithm recommended. One of the 9-year-old accounts and one 14-year-old watched the recommended videos, while the others did not. And, they found, YouTube pushed content on shootings and weapons to all four—but at a much higher volume to the pair who clicked on the YouTube-recommended videos.
"It’s bad enough that YouTube makes videos glorifying gun violence accessible to children. Now we’re discovering that it recommends these videos to young people," said Campaign for Accountability executive director Michelle Kuppersmith. "Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of Big Tech’s algorithms taking the worst of the worst and pushing it to kids in an endless pursuit of engagement."
YouTube said in a statement that it has robust control processes in place and that the researchers’ activity may not accurately reflect the behavior of users in real life.
"We offer a number of options for younger viewers, including a standalone YouTube Kids app and our Supervised Experience tools which are designed to create a safer experience for tweens and teens whose parents have decided they are ready to use the main YouTube app," said a YouTube spokesperson.
"We welcome research on our recommendations, and we’re exploring more ways to bring in academic researchers to study our systems. But in reviewing this report’s methodology, it’s difficult for us to draw strong conclusions. For example, the study doesn’t provide context of how many overall videos were recommended to the test accounts, and also doesn’t give insight into how the test accounts were set up, including whether YouTube’s Supervised Experiences tools were applied."
The recommended videos showed school shootings and other mass shootings, graphic images of how much damage guns can inflict on a human body and how-to guides for converting a handgun to a fully automatic weapon. YouTube even repeatedly recommended an R-rated movie about the young life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to the accounts, say the researchers.
These videos were pushed far more to those accounts that engaged with recommended videos—in some cases more than 10 times more. The videos did not appear to be age-restricted. During November, YouTube pushed 382 real firearms videos to the 9-year-old engagement account—an average of more than 12 per day—while the teen account was served with 1,325. By contrast, the 14-year-old account that did not click on the recommended content got 172 weapons videos.
"Violent video games have long been blamed for mass shootings in the U.S., despite no real evidence confirming the connection," said Kuppersmith. "Yet YouTube’s algorithms seem intent on glorifying real-world gun use to boys as young as 9—at a time when mass shooters are trending younger and younger."
