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YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the gun-control dept.

YouTube has 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," reports Bloomberg. "Additionally, YouTube said it will prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms." From the report: "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." "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 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.

2 of 667 comments (clear)

  1. Gab tv just went online by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And just today, Gab TV went online.

    Seriously - why do these companies think they need to direct our thoughts and actions into "acceptable" channels?

    There's an interesting set of "public forum" lawsuits that discuss this. Especially this one from CA.

    Basically, if a system becomes the equivalent of the town bulletin board, then freedom of speech must be enforced.

    (I recall a man suing a mall for taking down his (otherwise legal) posts on *their* builletin board. They claimed that their board was private property, and could decide what was allowed. He claimed that the mall replaced the supermarket which used to be there, and the mall bulletin-board now became the public forum that used to be the supermarket bulletin-board.)

    I think the dividing line would have to be public access. If you *pay* someone to write (for example) articles for your paper, then you can control what they write and choose to publish or not. If you *let anyone* post commentary or opinions, then first amendment must be enforced.

    (Oh and if you disagree, can you please show why companies don't need to enforce freedom of speech, while bakeries must make custom gay wedding cakes when they don't want to? They're both 1st amendment issues.)

  2. Might not be his fault by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can forgive that you don't understand this given the 2008 Heller decision is what clearly established the individual right to bear arms. But do please try to keep up, it's been 9 years now.

    It might not be his fault.

    Note that some school textbooks show the amendment rewritten to promote that view.

    I have to wonder, with this and all the one-sided bans and anti-right policies, if we really are at the start of a civil war.