YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos & Embraces Gun Control

[Y_Participant 4591]

YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate [1]
By Polly Mosendz and Mark Bergen Bloomberg 22nd March 2018

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.”

YouTube has placed greater restrictions on content several times in the past year, responding to a series of issues with inappropriate and offensive videos. Most of those changes involved pulling ads from categories of videos. Google is more reluctant to remove entire videos from YouTube, but has been willing to do so with terrorism-related content.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry lobbying group, called YouTube’s new policy “worrisome.”

“We suspect it will be interpreted to block much more content than the stated goal of firearms and certain accessory sales,” the foundation said in a statement. “We see the real potential for the blocking of educational content that serves instructional, skill-building and even safety purposes.

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.”

The firearms decision comes days before Saturday’s “March For Our Lives“, a rally organized by survivors of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.

The new YouTube policies will be enforced starting in April, but at least two video bloggers have already been affected. Spike’s Tactical, a firearms company, said in a post on Facebook that it was suspended from YouTube due to “repeated or severe violations” of the video platform’s guidelines.

“Well, since we’ve melted some snowflakes on YouTube and got banned, might as well set IG and FB on fire!,” Spike’s wrote on Facebook, where it has over 111,000 followers, referring to the social network and its Instagram app. A YouTube spokeswoman said the channel has been reinstated after it was mistakenly removed.

InRange TV, another channel devoted to firearms, wrote on its Facebook page that it would begin uploading videos to PornHub, an adult content website.

“YouTube’s newly released released vague and one-sided firearms policy makes it abundantly clear that YouTube cannot be counted upon to be a safe harbor for a wide variety of views and subject matter,” InRange TV wrote.

“PornHub has a history of being a proactive voice in the online community, as well as operating a resilient and robust video streaming platform.” PornHub didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the matter.

Last month, gun control activists escalated the pressure on tech giants for giving a platform to the National Rifle Association. A flurry of businesses cut ties with the pro-gun group after the deadly Parkland school shooting. Companies with streaming services, such as Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and YouTube, declined to remove the NRA channel.

Reddit Wades Into the Gun Control Debate [2]
By Polly Mosendz and Lizette Chapman Bloomberg 22nd March 2018

Several popular firearms-related communities were removed from link-sharing site Reddit on Wednesday after an update to the company’s policies.

“As of March 21, 2018, we have made a new addition to our content policy forbidding transactions for certain classes of goods and services,” a Reddit spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Moving forward, we are prohibiting transactions that are either illicit or strictly controlled. Communities focused on such transactions and users who attempt to conduct them will be banned from the site.”

The policy impacted pages, known as subreddits, which discussed firearms, ammunition, explosives, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, stolen goods, personal information, paid services involving physical sexual contact and falsified documents.

Subreddits banned from the site under the new policy include r/GunDeals, r/GunsForSale and r/AKMarketplace.

The policy change invoked a lively discussion on the platform. A number of Reddit users specifically expressed frustration about the loss of r/GunDeals, arguing that the group does not actually conduct sales but links to deals offered elsewhere.

The company responded: “Because this policy forbids facilitating the transactions, it impacts communities that are dedicated to connecting buyers and sellers. We want to emphasize, though that communities dedicated solely to discussion about guns and gun ownership are not impacted by this change.”

On Twitter, one user called on the National Rifle Association to respond to Reddit’s decision. “We need a boycott,” the user said.

Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Steve Huffman earlier this month told a panel at the South by Southwest conference that banning communities is a long process that involves “internal hand wringing” around the importance of protecting free speech. The site is in the process of refining those policies now while finalizing a redesign.

Citations
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-bans-firearm-sales-and-how-to-videos-prompting-backlash
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/reddit-wades-into-the-gun-control-debate

[Ranger OneParticipant 16836]

Silicon Valley is run by a bunch of authoritarian San Francisco globo-liberals.

I hope they get hit by an earthquake registering 10.5 on the Richter scale.

All my life I've had doubts about who I am, where I belonged. Now I'm like the arrow that springs from the bow. No hesitation, no doubts. The path is clear. And what are you? Alive. Everything else is negotiable. Women have rights; men have responsibilities; MGTOW have freedom. Marriage is for chumps. If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart-R'as al Ghul.

[Y_Participant 4591]

Ranger One wrote:

Silicon Valley is run by a bunch of authoritarian San Francisco globo-liberals.

I hope they get hit by an earthquake registering 10.5 on the Richter scale.

FB Reddit Google etc etc – the whole stinking lot are all in the same team and get paid by the CIA or worse mobs.

Trust no one.

[Faust For ScienceParticipant 22531]

Guys. Relax. This could viewed as a good thing because all those people that use these services that are worth anything are already jumping ship for other platforms and services.

Meanwhile, the only ones left using the service are single women posting pictures and videos of their cats. Once the advertisers realize this demographic does not have the money to buy anything, they will drop the service, the company goes bankrupt, and the service is shutdown.

This is even worse for the techno-elite. They are doing this way to early. If they had waited until summer, there would not be enough time for the nationalists to reform before the November elections. Now, there is plenty of time for the nationalists to find other platforms, rebuilt their base and come back even stronger before the November elections.

This is like when the Obama Administration told the banks to stop helping gun stores. That means that when the banks collapse the gun stores will still be one of the few businesses still open.

[KevinStylesParticipant 2580]

Yay censorship O.o One more reason to hate Google.

[TsarParticipant 393]

Ranger One wrote:

I hope they get hit by an earthquake registering 10.5 on the Richter scale.

A north korean nuke would be a far more effective medecine

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'”

[Ranger OneParticipant 16836]

I guess this weekend I add another project to the list, which will be downloading gun-making videos from youtube.

In addition to my main project of mapping out in the yard where I will dig.

Moving over 4,000 cu feet of soil (30,000 gal or 1,500 wheelbarrow trips) from one side of my property to the other. To raise the elevation in one area, and dig out a 240-sq ft underground shelter as well as an underground gun range.

That is where I will move most of my weapons to when complete, as well as ammo and food stockpile.

All my life I've had doubts about who I am, where I belonged. Now I'm like the arrow that springs from the bow. No hesitation, no doubts. The path is clear. And what are you? Alive. Everything else is negotiable. Women have rights; men have responsibilities; MGTOW have freedom. Marriage is for chumps. If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart-R'as al Ghul.

[Ranger OneParticipant 16836]

In other news, why haven’t the Republicans (who supposedly have a lot of business connections) made YouTube, Google, etc censorship an issue, and started organizing a rival site that is not liberal?

You have Fox which somewhat counters CNN, so why is there no Fox-scale alternative to liberal, globalist YouTube?

All my life I've had doubts about who I am, where I belonged. Now I'm like the arrow that springs from the bow. No hesitation, no doubts. The path is clear. And what are you? Alive. Everything else is negotiable. Women have rights; men have responsibilities; MGTOW have freedom. Marriage is for chumps. If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart-R'as al Ghul.

[chirParticipant]

As soon as I heard this I have been copying all my favorite videos to mpg files.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning; it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

[Anonymous 0]

I heard about an alternative the Youtube guns folks are going to called Full30. I havent looked into it so I cant say too much about it.

[Author]

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