YouTube Introduces New Restrictions on Videos Involving Guns
“will ban videos that promote or link to websites selling firearms and accessories”
YouTube is jumping on the gun control bandwagon by restricting certain gun-related content. This is going to have an adverse effect on thousands of YouTube users who have channels devoted entirely to the use and upkeep of firearms.
Bloomberg reports:
YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate
YouTube, a popular media site for firearms enthusiasts, this week quietly introduced tighter restrictions on videos involving weapons, becoming the latest battleground in the U.S. gun-control debate.
YouTube will ban videos that promote or link to websites selling firearms and accessories, including bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire faster. Additionally, YouTube said it will prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms. The video site, owned by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has faced intense criticism for hosting videos about guns, bombs and other deadly weapons.
For many gun-rights supporters, YouTube has been a haven. A current search on the site for “how to build a gun” yields 25 million results, though that includes items such as toys. At least one producer of gun videos saw its page suspended on Tuesday. Another channel opted to move its videos to an adult-content site, saying that will offer more freedom than YouTube.
“We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “While we’ve long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories.”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry lobbying group, called YouTube’s new policy “worrisome.”
Here’s the full statement from the NSSF website:
YOUTUBE’S NEW POLICY PROVIDES CAUSE FOR CONCERN
YouTube’s announcement this week of a new firearms content policy is troubling. We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales. Especially worrisome is the potential for blocking educational content that serves an instructional and skill-building purpose. YouTube’s policy announcement has also served to invite political activists to flood their review staff with complaints about any video to which they may proffer manufactured outrage.
Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square. The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech, which has constitutional protection. Such actions also impinge on the Second Amendment.
Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon is one of the few journalists working today with a real understanding of guns. He reacted on Twitter:
YouTube appears to be going to war with gun owners https://t.co/RslGGoZC2S
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) March 21, 2018
This is on top of its current war with creators. The platform is eating itself. Bizarre.
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) March 21, 2018
A YouTube channel called “Spikes Tactical” posted the content of the new policy on Instagram with the following note:
The Liberal Left will slowly chip away at our freedoms and erode our rights, and the first step is to squelch our voice. To say we’re fucking pissed is an understatement. However we are not backing down from these bitches. SHALL NOT INFRINGE!
Here’s a genuine question. Does any social media site ever ban or restrict anything cherished by the progressive left? So far it seems like the bans all go in only one direction.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
In an interesting…and predictable…wrinkle on this, the economic law of substitution is asserting itself again.
Gun sites are moving to PornHub for a platform.
http://www.alloutdoor.com/2018/03/21/youtube-purges-gun-videos-shooters-move-pornhub/
Bullet-proof…!!!
Brings a whole new meaning to gun porn! 🙂
Since you are a lawyer I am curious about how much this will effect their trademark, patents and ability to prevent someone to offer a competing service.
So if they decide to not allow specific content and i start a competing service called boobtube and allow that content, what are their chances in a fair court of shutting me down?
You don’t know about boobtube. It already exists. It’s great!
There is a huge opportunity here for those servicing porn web sites to actively recruit YouTube customers, and quite possibly increase traffic to those porn sites.
For example, I would not be surprised if YouTube starts harassing survivalist customers. So an enterprising service provider could go after them to move. I am sure that there are lots of YOUTube customer segments which could be raided. Is this the start of a viable YouTube alternative?
Is YouTube about to experience unintended consequences?
Yet you can find a plethora of vids on how to eat a Tide pod, or how to use marijuana, or drug lords etc.
Sometimes, when you jump on the train, it hits you.
Or like Thugvon taking his fists to a gunfight.
Our side uses weak words like troubling, concern, worrisome, etc.
It is like showing up to a street fight with a pillow as a weapon.
You watch, the pillow hides a gun. I don’t think that “our” side is stupid or weak. Google has made itself irrelevant and will be punished in the market. Google is creating it’s new competition as people look elsewhere. I am slowly moving away from Google’s garbage.
A good start to remove Google from your life is a search engine called Duck Duck Go. And easy first step.
What is it about search engines all having really silly names?
Duck Duck Go
Google
Bing
Yahoo
Dunno 😛
It appears that “http://dunno.com/” is available.
Why am I not …
No, the blasphemy. I will not. Go. There.
I do know I have power over life and death. It’s why God and the Marine Corps created me a naval officer.
I started using DuckDuckGo the other day, because yes, Google’s monopoly on much is a problem that will only get worse. But I’m not going to start frequenting Pornhub as a replacement for YouTube, and YouTube is most certainly not irrelevant. It is still the only venue for deep content on topics I care about like woodworking, homesteading, 4Runner offroading, certain computer games, home-built computers, mechanical engineering, and analysis of the latest sales at Harbor Freight.
There’s no question that content creators are in various stages of discontent with YT’s constant changing of policy that always seems to further limit their income stream, but YT is huge for a reason. They deliver the eyeballs and the advertisers. It takes time to chip away at that. It’d be glad to help democratize the field, but I won’t stop watching the videos I enjoy to make that happen.
I also won’t stop using my gmail account I’ve had for 14 years or my Android-based smart phone, the first of which I got in 2009 (Motorola Droid). The alternatives are no more trustworthy and a lot less enjoyable to use.
I switched to DuckDuckGo also.
Slowly started unplugging Facebook and Google and the rest from my life.
I largely do not miss them.
Switched to Duck Duck Go over a year ago, never was involved with Twitter and years ago I had Facebook for a week or two – inundated by people asking for boards, nails, etc. for their “farm” on Farmville (as a rural resident I never did understand what that was all about, nor did I care). I dropped out never to return.
I swore off Apple products years ago when Jobs tried to get Congress to give him a huge tax break to fund his “contribution” of Apple (II IIRC) computers to all schools in the nation. He planned on capturing the personal computer market by getting every child to use his computers in school. Congress refused and I have since refused to buy any over-hyped, over priced Apple product. Means I’m stuck with an Android phone, but I’m old and it’s pretty much just a phone and (slowly typed, I used properly spelled [when the auto-correct feature doesn’t change the word on me] whole words and only one finger to select letters) message system. Oh, and Tornado warnings are a good thing in Texas.
ixquick is also good.
Kinda makes you wonder what will be banned next…..
Where does it stop though? Are they going to start banning all the Battlefield 1 videos? Or every video that is a shooting game?
If they have already begun to demonetise these videos its only a matter of time before they starting banning EVERYTHING with a gun.
There were threats to Overwatch videos, so yah it is in the realm of possibility.
what about all those Avengers Clips where people are you know actually shooting each other…
Blowing each other up with bombs…
Hypocrites.
Just watched Batman pick up an alien pulse rifle and fire it at another humanoid.
Reported. Promotes gun violence.
Let the games begin, this will be fun.
The worst thing about censorship is ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
Outstanding!
It looks like YouTube may be on the same road that FaceBook is on. There is only so much that many of us will tolerate before we turn our backs. There is another network called https://videos.recoilweb.com/pages/discover/d/home
that I understand many of the gun guys are switching to. In today’s world there always seems to be a workaround for almost anything.
The correct adjective would be “insipid”. The response could have also done with correctly identifying the “hollow and noisome rattle of virtue-signaling”.
Here’s a genuine question. Does any social media site ever ban or restrict anything cherished by the progressive left? So far it seems like the bans all go in only one direction.
Name one extant thing truly of value that the progressive left cherishes.
Planned Parenthood location finder app?
Hey Mike are you shadowbanning people?
My comment about Batman’s pulse rifle only shows up when I’m logged in. should be under the Avengers remark, which shows up even when I’m logged out and reading the site.
Is there an explanation for that? Because it would be ironic to discover legal Insurrection was shadowbanning people on a thread about censorship.
logged in just to reply.
Comment is showing just fine.
Not sure who would down-vote this; it’s a legitimate concern. I up-voted just to balance. 🙂
But your comment is visible to me. Maybe refresh your browser?
Do we need to start posting objections to liberal progressive content, saying we are offended at what is posted, calling it bigoted and hate speech? Start using Alinsky tactics against them? We really should be also looking for radical jihad content, as well, to ban it.
Do we need to start posting objections to liberal progressive content…
That might work, for a short time. Then, they’d decide their progressive content is more important than the objections of a bunch of deplorables, and just ban the deplorables instead.
they’d decide their progressive content is more important than the objections of a bunch of deplorables, and just ban the deplorables instead.
Yes, they could do that. But then the mask would be off: YouTube would be publicly and forever branded as a liberal echo chamber where half the country is not welcome. They’d not just lose conservatives and pro-gun channels; they’d ALSO lose the vast population of moderates, who come wanting to hear both sides.
I personally can’t think of a quicker way for a company to contribute to its own irrelevancy. Or commit corporate suicide.
NO!!!!
Be an apple pie eating, red blooded American and find an alternative.
Banning is stupid no matter who is being banned.
Sorry to disagree, but it’s past time “Progressives” and anti-freedom groups face what they dish out.
They want to use YouTube’s rules as a weapon against us. They should prepare to have those very same rules used as a weapon against them.
So yes, I absolutely agree about finding another venue to host gun videos. But don’t take this lying down, either; on your way out (or occasionally, as you feel like it), turn up the heat on the anti-gun video producers. Make them justify their own beliefs and content the same way they make us justify ours.
Archer they will get what they deserve when they are not watched on the new video site. They lose no matter what they do because they have to use coercion to get anyone to watch and unless they come to each of our houses with a gun to make us watch, then no one will watch. You are wasting time trying to hurt them. Just find an alternative that hurts them far more than playing tit for tat on their turf.
Good point, but also consider this: YouTube’s investigators look into “reports” 24/7, and investigate each one (this, again, is in their own rules). Every complaint we submit on the anti-gun videos is another complaint they have to investigate before they can get to the complaints against pro-gun videos. Decrease the signal-to-noise ratio to next-to-nothing.
We outnumber the anti-gun people by orders of magnitude. If we can flood YouTube with enough “offensive video” reports, they’ll either become so backlogged they have to change policy, or they’ll have to remove the anti-gun channels, too.
Or, again, the mask comes off and YouTube commits corporate suicide by labeling themselves as a liberal, anti-gun, (ironically) anti-free-speech echo chamber.
And we lose nothing but a few minutes of our time.
Yes. I’m working through Everytown’s videos, especially the ones that end with a child — who it’s implied is uneducated about gun safety (ignorance that Everytown promotes, btw) — shooting him- or herself. It falls under “Harmful dangerous acts”.
And the ones promoting flooding Congress with calls about some bill or another, spreading inaccurate or false information, and saying Congress is “bought by the NRA” (when Everytown contributes ten times to campaigns what the NRA does), is being reported as “Spam or misleading content”.
They’re all gun-related, and promote a dangerous ignorance. YouTube’s rules, if applied evenly and fairly, would disallow them just as much as any pro-gun channel’s videos.
Rush was talking about FB yesterday, his take was that these leftists always beg for regulation and so on for other companies, but would not want it for their own. With all the gnashing of teeth over Trump’s election team collecting data from FB (which, despite how the media is trying to make it sound illegal, which it wasn’t) and the big selling off of FB stock, he said regulation is now being talked about for FB.
Once these tech giants start having the rules they push against one side being applied to them, through regulation of their business, they will finally be on the receiving end of what they push. I enjoy looking at various videos and checking in once in a while on my friends through FB, but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I need to take my business elsewhere. Shut down my FB account, ban (heh) YouTube from my computers. Businesses who pull the SJW stuff and over do it have seen that right leaning people just stop using them, and their businesses take a sharp downturn. Target has felt this, and while they try to walk back some of their crap, the main things they pulled remain. Their business continues shrinking. It’s not all from on line shopping, but liberals cannot allow to see beyond their hatreds.
Just like the interwebz when companies do stupid things it is pretty much irrevocable. I have yet to see a company that did something stupid and have a backlash really recover from it.
But no one’s going to regulate just YouTube. If Congress passes the equivalent of Dodd-Frank for regulation of online video services, isn’t that just fine for the YouTubes and Facebooks of the world, and a wonderful way to strangle their competition? It’s happened before in all kinds of other industries, why not this?
Oh look, net neutrality….
Any lawyers care to comment about the possibility or chances of winning an anti-trust lawsuit against YouTube and/or Google?
At this point, like it or not, they are the big dogs for video hosting and web searching, and they have their hands in everything. AND they have a long and well-documented history of suppressing — through various means — conservative, pro-constitutional, and pro-freedom (especially pro-Second-Amendment) voices.
YouTube demonetized pro-gun videos, and are now banning whole channels. Google misleadingly arranges their search results so that pro-gun sites are less likely to appear on the first page, and their News tab often doesn’t display pro-gun sources at all.
At what point are their services considered a “public venue” where Constitutional protections apply, even to private corporations? And at what point do they wield enough influence over the public sphere (or own/control enough “stuff”) that they are effectively a monopoly, and open to anti-trust proceedings if they abuse their position (which has demonstrably happened)?
At what point are their services considered a “public venue” where Constitutional protections apply, even to private corporations?
“Never.” The answer to that question is “never”.
The fact that far too many Internet-using conservatives are too ignorant of how the Internet works to find any of the more than two dozen major alternative web search, video hosting or social networking services is not, and never will be, justification for state appropriation of private enterprise.
Quit whining that a service you got for free isn’t being operated in a way you personally approve of and learn how to type “alternatives to Google” into Google.
One thing that should be obvious is that people get to YouTube through links. It doesn’t really matter that the alternatives are obscure
The only thing that prevents John doe from starting an alternative site is the cost of servers. The porn sites obviously have the servers in place. The only thing they need is a URL that doesn’t include the word porn, and they can replace YouTube without embarrassing non-porn customers.
not surprising, following their adsense restrictions from years ago.
had a forum, used adsense, a FFL dealer answered question about hunting rifle prices and stock, adsense account cancelled with no way to ever get it back. once banned from adsense banned for life.
I listed some Magpul furniture for sale the other day on Craigslist. Uploaded a photo of just the furniture, not attached to a firearm at all. No firearm for sale and no firearm in the photo. Within a few hours, my post was flagged and taken down. Luckily I had already been contacted and had arranged a meeting place and time. Craigslist lets you whore yourself out with “romance” listings, but I can’t sell some plastic parts that go on a firearm…
Not surprising. Craigslist was created by San Francisco leftists and continues to be run by leftists.
It’s useful for what it is, as long as you don’t forget what it is.
Since the bomber in Austin learned how to make a bomb online ,I suggest internet users need to have a background check , be 21 and have a three day waiting period
I can see the Everytown videos now: “The Internet is more regulated than guns!!!”
To the same degree anything and everything else is “more regulated than guns” (by which I mean, “not at all”), sure.
Since the bomber in Austin learned how to make a bomb online ,I suggest internet users need to have a background check , be 21 and have a three day waiting period
Since the bomber in Austin learned how to make a bomb online ,I suggest internet users need to have a background check , be 21 and have a three day waiting period
https://www.full30.com
Forget YouTube.
“Hickok45” and “Forgotten Weapons” are already there. 🙂
Hickok45 was the first one I thought of when I saw the YouTube ban.
That guy really has fun doing what he does and does a great job of walking the viewer through the basics of each and every firearm
thanks for the link!
when was the last YooToopes allowed how to do a ‘safe abortion’ and bill the US Gov’t ?
with a #meToStupid to know how to use various alcohol and Mary Jayne protectors?
Stoning of the Devil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning_of_the_Devil
and what do they believe are devils —- non pee-lee-burrs, which include different strains of Da Ree-leech-On of Peeese.
see the various Boulder Overpass incidents.
https://hosted.ap.org/republicanherald/article/2e938f05eaa74a68ac183cc2c82b5e80/boulder-pushed-california-overpass-kills-car-passenger
Boulder pushed off California overpass kills car passenger
Here is an example of a video that would seem to be now prohibited by Youtube’s new policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oPVfUea70s
The policy at: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7667605?hl=en&ref_topic=2803176
says:
“Specifically, we don’t allow content that: .. Provides instructions on manufacturing .. ammunition ..” The Dillon Precision reloading equipment sales videos showing how their products are used seem to break this policy and I have been told that they are diversifying their video server platforms in case they are suddenly banned from Youtube.
Since Google, Facebook, and YouTube are functioning as the ministry of truth for the govt they ought to be treated like the government with regards to first second and fourth amendment rights.
Monopolies have been busted with far less influence and dominance.
Well heck … there go all those black gangsta videos …
If only we had the gun laws of France.
I joined full30.com for firearms videos.