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

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.

Comments

Re:Reddit too.

[greenwow]

Good. Their kind needs to be silenced.

Re:Extremist videos

[The Evil Atheist]

Car videos don't promote crashing into things. Guns - you can only show them shooting at things to kill or destroy them.

If car channels start making videos that only shows things being run over, or making light of driving dangerously on public roads, then they should absolutely be taken down.

Car enthusiasts don't (yet) suffer the mental delusions of gun nuts.

Re:That's odd

[The Evil Atheist]

That's the problem with Texans. They imagine it's going to be like a movie with a stand off.

Well guess what? Life is not a fucking movie. If an Islamic extremist wants to kill you with a truck, he'd do it while you weren't prepared.

Guns seem to take people's IQ down by 10 points or something. Giving you delusions where people only attack you when you're prepared. If guns are so great, why isn't the Middle East an epitome of peace? You have rebels and governments with weapons. What happened to your cosy fantasy where peace breaks out because of guns?