YouTube draws ire for filtering gay and transgender content

YouTube on Monday admitted that its familyfriendly restricted mode had wrongly labeled some videos on its site. The company apologized and promised to fix the error after users complained that the site was filtering some videos about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

“Sorry for all the confusion with Restricted Mode. Some videos have been incorrectly labeled, and that’s not right. We’re on it! More to come,” the company wrote on Twitter.

YouTube was pressed over the weekend by some of its biggest stars to address the issue, and the statement on Monday appeared to go further to address some of the complaints than a statement released on Sunday that said the platform was looking into some users’ concerns.

In its statement Sunday, YouTube said that many videos featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender content were unaffected by the filter, an optional parental-control mode, and that it only targeted those that discussed sensitive topics such as politics, health and sexuality.

But some video creators, including musicians Tegan and Sara and the YouTube personality and gay-rights advocate Tyler Oakley, disagreed, pointing to blocked content that they argued was suitable for children of any age. They also said that the filtering shields lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children from the resources and support the videos can provide.

Tegan and Sara, among others, responded to the statement released on Monday with measured praise. Still others questioned whether the filtering was even necessary.

YouTube described restricted mode as “an optional feature used by a very small subset of users who want to have a more limited YouTube experience.”

The feature relies on “community flagging, age-restrictions, and other signals” to identify which videos to filter, an official description said. In a company video describing restricted mode, a YouTube presenter notes that the system is “not 100 percent accurate.”

In its initial response to the criticism, posted on Twitter on Sunday night, YouTube said that it was “so proud” to host LGBT voices and that it was “looking into your concerns.”