As we reported, YouTube has instituted a new policy for firearms-related content. ALL gun videos are automatically restricted — and thus demonetized and delisted by their search engine– until a YouTube censor views and approves them (a process that can take up to seven days). Well, not all firearms-related content . . .
The NRA’s [ad-free] videos are not restricted (i.e. they’re not removed from view or search when a user switches to restricted mode). This may have to do with the fact that the NRA spends tens of thousands of dollars advertising on YouTube. Or YouTube owner Google’s reluctance to tangle with the 5 million-strong gun rights group.
Also excluded from the automatic firearms-related content delisting process: [ad-free] videos by The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety and [their subsidiary] Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
That said, switching on restricted mode does exclude some of their videos. But only a relative few. And the channels ARE available in search in restricted mode.
To be clear: no video YouTube classifies as restricted receives any visibility in search when restricted mode is activated, or more importantly, any ad money. (See: TTAG’s blank screen above.)
Bottom line: YouTube is starving firearms-related channels of cash (e.g., The Military Arms Channel, Yankee Marshall). Their output is demonetized until YouTube adjudicates the content as “innocent.”
Make that “unless.” Three days after lodging an appeal, MAC’s Tim Harmsen reports that YouTube declared his video on belt-fed AR’s restricted. No further appeal is possible. It’s demonetized forever.
This is anti-gun censorship, plain and simple. Well, not so plain and not so simple. But YouTube’s new anti-firearms freedom policy is easier for the “Don’t Be Evil” folks to defend than an outright ban. Which is, I suspect, what they really really want.