All of your favorite Youtube gun channels may be gone soon

It's not censorship, it's discrimination. Gun videos can still be posted to YouTube and watched on YouTube. YouTube is discriminating against the owners of gun channels by not allowing them to participate in the ad revenue generation programs.

WeaponsCollector said:

Google has hijacked youtube and seemingly implemented an agenda of censorship and thought control.

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Not exactly.
As I understand it (admittedly, my info comes from youtube, so have that grain of salt at hand....), it's some of youtube's large advertisers who're causing the stink. They're all Bolsheviks and, like all two year-olds, must have their way or no one can play.So, right or wrong, youtube, being in the business to sell adverts, is simply trying to give their [paying] customers what they want.
I 'spect that, in the end, as these things usually pan out, everything'll work out.

CrazySanMan said:

It's not censorship, it's discrimination. Gun videos can still be posted to YouTube and watched on YouTube. YouTube is discriminating against the owners of gun channels by not allowing them to participate in the ad revenue generation programs.

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That would probably fly if gun owners were a protected class. We are not. You aren't born a gun owner, and it's not a protected lifestyle choice like religion.

Quick update : It looks like YouTube really is targeting Gun channels. They just unblocked all the LGBTQ channels. Gun channels, not so much.

From YouTube

"We want to clarify that Restricted Mode should not filter out content belonging to individuals or groups based on certain attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion or sexual orientation,"

Link

having content be demonitized is different than banning something.

for all of these "professional" youtubers, if you were relying on youtube to be your source of income, poor career choice. anyone with a million followers (hell even 50k followers) could make plenty of money outside of youtube. build a social media following with your videos, launch a website, pay a ghostwiter to write a book for you, and sell merch, and the 2 bucks/1000 views that google pays you will be a drop in teh bucket compared to the money you can make.

i only fault google for not trying to find different advertisers for their restricted videos (you don't think budwieser, trojan, jack daniels, etc would have a problem advertising to "mature" audiences?).

Z_Man said:

having content be demonitized is different than banning something.

for all of these "professional" youtubers, if you were relying on youtube to be your source of income, poor career choice. anyone with a million followers (hell even 50k followers) could make plenty of money outside of youtube. build a social media following with your videos, launch a website, pay a ghostwiter to write a book for you, and sell merch, and the 2 bucks/1000 views that google pays you will be a drop in teh bucket compared to the money you can make.

i only fault google for not trying to find different advertisers for their restricted videos (you don't think budwieser, trojan, jack daniels, etc would have a problem advertising to "mature" audiences?).

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Most of these people never set out to be "professional" YouTubers. In most cases, they already had non monetized channels that became popular. YouTube then solicited their channels and offered advertising revenue in order to boost content and ad revenue.

I do agree that YouTube should have tried to find advertisers, that's literally their job. Seems like a conscious decision to me.

Decoy said:

Most of these people never set out to be "professional" YouTubers. In most cases, they already had non monetized channels that became popular. YouTube then solicited their channels and offered advertising revenue in order to boost content and ad revenue.

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Yep. I have a channel that's collected about 700k views. Twice Gootube has solicited me to "monetize" it. (I've declined.)

all of these videos still get to live on youtube as non monitized videos. the videos aren't in some special place to never be found. if you search for it its there. the people making a big issue of this are those who in fact make their living off of youtube, and failed to use their youtube following and turn it into a business. in the long run youtube will lose revenue. however after the wall street jornal hit piece on pew die pie the advertisers actually paid attention to youtube and demanded (the big names, coke, P&G etc) that they coudl chose not to advertize with certain youtubers, and google said their algorithm couldn't do that. so the advertisers threatened to pull all ads. youtube decided they would hyper police the content, and have restricted videos. and then restricted videos could not have advertising. firearms content is an unintended victim of this pissing match between google, who could have easily changed their advertising algorithm to allow coke to say i don't want my ads on pewdiepie's page.

their sandbox, their rules. there are already video sites popping up trying to fill some of this void. some youtubers are proper mad, cuz if you drop an F bomb or reference anything sexual, or reference drinking or drug use your video is restricted, and impacts your channel, as all of that videos views no longer count towards your total (restricted videos are in a different category), so your share of revenue ($/thousand views) will be reduced, as total views impacts the amount of share you get for ad revenue. so the people who are big time youtubers that stay will be catering their videos towards the new advertising standards, and will water down the product the same way that TV shows or movies are watered down to cater to advertisers.

whenever you get ad revenue to finance any project, they get a say, the same way whoever finances anything gets a say. their money, their rules.

Interestingly enough I just got a 30 second spot for a concealed carry class on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMyKlYBuc4A

Soooo..... who knows?

Z_Man said:

all of these videos still get to live on youtube as non monitized videos. the videos aren't in some special place to never be found. if you search for it its there. the people making a big issue of this are those who in fact make their living off of youtube, and failed to use their youtube following and turn it into a business. in the long run youtube will lose revenue. however after the wall street jornal hit piece on pew die pie the advertisers actually paid attention to youtube and demanded (the big names, coke, P&G etc) that they coudl chose not to advertize with certain youtubers, and google said their algorithm couldn't do that. so the advertisers threatened to pull all ads. youtube decided they would hyper police the content, and have restricted videos. and then restricted videos could not have advertising. firearms content is an unintended victim of this pissing match between google, who could have easily changed their advertising algorithm to allow coke to say i don't want my ads on pewdiepie's page.

their sandbox, their rules. there are already video sites popping up trying to fill some of this void. some youtubers are proper mad, cuz if you drop an F bomb or reference anything sexual, or reference drinking or drug use your video is restricted, and impacts your channel, as all of that videos views no longer count towards your total (restricted videos are in a different category), so your share of revenue ($/thousand views) will be reduced, as total views impacts the amount of share you get for ad revenue. so the people who are big time youtubers that stay will be catering their videos towards the new advertising standards, and will water down the product the same way that TV shows or movies are watered down to cater to advertisers.

whenever you get ad revenue to finance any project, they get a say, the same way whoever finances anything gets a say. their money, their rules.

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Agreed. If you're making a business, one single stream of income is a tiny business. Gotta diversify. And to the channels that do fall under the restricted list, they'll just have to get more creative instead of water things down.

The really big time people have other money making options. The biggest pinch will be quasi-amateur just looking to defray expenses on projects too involved to pull out of their pocket for a hobby

Yup. And I can confirm that it's not just firearms that are being affected.

YouTube Excludes Gun Control Channels from Censorship

LINK

Does this mean no more Nut'n Fancy running thru the desert like a nitwit, dressed in full battle garb including plate carrier, shooting left and right then left again? All to review a new M&P pistol? Sorry, but I can't stand that fool. He actually gives pretty decent firearms reviews, but the theatrics make him look like an a-hole. He deserves a Jethro Gibbs / Dinozzo back of the head slap.