Watching guntube has increasingly become obnoxious because of the stupid “code words” creators have to use to not offend the robot moderators. I regularly see videos where several seconds of the start are the creator essentially talking to the AI and promising they aren’t doing anything illegal or directing viewers to gun seller websites (which isn’t illegal!).
Often content creators get unexplained strikes anyway, with no real way to appeal unless you’re a huge channel. Entire channels can be wiped out this way, taking years of irreplaceable content with them.
YouTube is either a bunch of anti-gunners themselves or cowards who folded to the pressure of Michael Bloomberg to slowly kill off legal gun content. Either way, they’re not true believers in free speech, and certainly not the right to keep and bear arms.
YouTube should be ashamed of themselves. The rules should be rolled back to whatever they were ten years ago when guntube thrived. Only illegal content should be against the rules. And if they don’t want to allow firearms on livestreams, fine. I can understand that one.
A simple change to the law could be that to enjoy the protections of Section 230, platforms must have a human appeals process when they take action against accounts over a certain number of followers or subscribers. The number can be pegged at 25,ooo, 50,000, something reasonable like that. It can’t be set too high or only the huge channels would benefit from the change to the law.
For example, if a creator so chooses, there should be a recorded interview with a human moderator who explains why the channel got a strike, was suspended or banned. The creator would then be allowed to argue their case. They’d get a copy of the recording at the end so they can share it.
Hiding behind algorithms and vague rules is obnoxious considering that we grant these assholes massive legal liability protections based on the premise that they are allegedly value-free conduits for creators’ speech. Perhaps these private platforms can’t be held to a maximal First Amendment-level standard, but they should certainly he held to a higher standard than they are now.
Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation.
The shooting news weekly and TTAG, and other the gun content web pages. They all agree with YouTube.
Because these “supporters” of the 2A also require misspelled words and code phases be used when making comments. It use to not be that way. But things changed when Trump got elected in 2016.
And it got much worse in 2020.
Or is this a Google requirement???
Censorship is gae. Just ask the J-e-w-s.
Stop using YouTube.
Youtube “creators” complain they’re being censored and can’t get to their audience then when suggested they stop using YouTube they say they can’t because they’ll lose their audience. Well, which is it?
Seems like having a video nobody can see and you can’t monetize defeats the entire purpose of using YouTube in the first place.
So.go to a friendlier place and build an audience that will actually be able to see your videos instead of working to.put up videos nobody will see.
You couldn’t possibly perform any worse than the clowns who flocked to bluesky for their safe space.
“Youtube “creators” complain they’re being censored and can’t get to their audience then when suggested they stop using YouTube they say they can’t because they’ll lose their audience. Well, which is it? ”
Its both.
The only alternative is Rumble, but guntubers won’t build an audience there because it doesn’t pay. They rely on YouTube income.
The whole YouTube ‘financial ecosystem’ is rife with threat for monetized content creators.
Basically, to monetize on YouTube you are required to join the ‘YouTube Partner Program’. This lets creators monetize their content via different methods including ad revenue and subscriptions and views. The partner program requires a channel have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months. Until you hit both thresholds, you earn $0 from ads (and other methods) regardless of views.
YouTube gets a cut of about 45% of the revenue a monetized channel brings in. Once monetized, YouTube pays creators based on CPM (cost per 1,000 ad impressions) and RPM (revenue per 1,000 views after YouTube’s 45% cut).
The more ad revenue and views a channel has, thus the more paid to YouTube, (over a certain amount that is not clearly defined) the less likely it becomes a channel will get strikes (even if the rules are violated some) from the ‘algorithm system’. This is why you see one monetized channel get strikes but another monetized channel doing the same thing not get strikes.
YouTube’s ‘financial ecosystem algorithm system’ is made for the main categories the basic YouTube ‘content ecosystem’ was intended for – these are: Personal Finance, Business/Marketing, Tech Reviews, How-To/Education, Lifestyle/Vlogs, Gaming, Entertainment/Comedy.
Gun content sits in the ‘How-To/Education’ niche in that eco-system for the ‘algorithm system’
But, monetized creators often make more from sponsorships and merchandise (which also includes product placement in the videos) than ads. YouTube doesn’t like this because they do not get a cut of that money and their platform is being used to make that money for the creator, and if YouTube thinks you are concentrating more on sponsorship and merchandise instead of ad’s and views from which they get a cut the more likely your channel is to get strikes. If a monetized channel is doing good for YouTube revenue-cut, like a pimp treats their money making hookers, the channel is less likely to get ‘strikes’ but if the youtube revenue-cut is not coming in very much, like a pimp treats their hookers not making them money, the channel is more likely to get strikes.
Then on top of all this are the ‘rules’ which are often very subjectively applied. But, for monetized channels, its the above that draws the most attention to ‘apply the rules’ which is why there is a claim that a rule was violated even though there was no rule violated and YouTube has to ‘really stretch imagination’ to apply a rule because YouTube can’t just come out and say “Hey, you are not making enough money for us so we are going to punish you by putting you in the time out corner for a while and maybe you will get the hint so when you do come back you will make us some money.”
Then there is a certain amount of animosity towards certain content by people behind the scenes at YouTube and gun-content channels, especially monetized gun-content channels, are routinely targeted for more intense ‘scrutiny’ and youtube plays their games. For example they may claim violations of rules where no violation actually existed so they can create a ‘strike’ record count (after so may strikes your channel gets de-monetized permanently or removed) or a channel may suddenly find its subscriber and views numbers decreasing because behind the scenes YouTube has ‘unsubscribed’ users and changed the number of views decreasing the numbers (which affects revenue for the channel and the channel is driven into the clutches of the YouTube financial eco-system for the ‘algorithm system’ which applies more ‘scrutiny’), or videos will get locked or moved into a private mode so no one can view them, or if a monetized channel tries to have a video without ad’s attached people trying to watch the video will get greeted with a sudden ‘this video is not available’ message like they would if they were using an ad-blocker. Then this animosity also creates strikes, often ridiculous and not warranted – for example, during the Biden tyranny the Biden admin coordinated and worked with YouTube left wing loyalists behind the scenes at youtube to censor American citizens on YouTube by removing videos and channels that pointed out the lies the Biden admin was telling about COVID by use of the YouTube strike system (these channels were pointing out the lies, and we know today these channels were telling the truth about those lies).
Gun content sits in the ‘How-To/Education’ niche in that eco-system for the ‘algorithm system’.
This just so happens to be the area where ‘information’ is disseminated that is not liked by the anti-gun and left wing, this ‘information’ encompasses gun related and ‘exposing’ left wing false narrative. Its also the area the left wingers use to push their ‘narratives’.
The ‘information’ that is contrary to the anti-gun and left wing ‘narratives’ is targeted for more intense ‘scrutiny’ than obvious false ‘information’ from the anti-gun and left wing. For example, last year, one left wing content creator kept pushing the false narrative that Trumps kids were ‘anchor babies’ and the Epstein files released by congress to the public specifically proved that Trump had raped a female minor who had worked at Mar-a-Lago in her teens – despite the actual evidence showing neither of these were true (and the minor who was supposedly raped when she was older had already come forward and said that it never happened). Yet, despite the YouTube rule against misinformation and knowing it was intentionally false, YouTube ‘relaxed’ its rules for this channel and others like it pushing the same or similar false narrative and did not issue any strikes or demonetize – while in the same time-frame for a gun-content creator who cited the factual and known to be true by the evidence information from a government report about defensive gun use YouTube issued strikes against that channel and de-monetized for spreading ‘misinformation’.
YouTube does not apply its ‘rules’ fairly, they ‘weaponize’ them to favor some content creators while disfavoring others and they are used in a biased manner for ‘personal and political’ reasons by the left wingers behind the scenes and they use them to ‘punish’ a content creator if they do not make enough money for YouTube.