YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos

According to an article in Bloomberg (March 21, 2018) YouTube has banned firearms demo videos.

YouTube, a popular media site for firearms enthusiasts, this week 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. Additionally, YouTube said it will prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms.

The video site, owned by Google, has faced intense criticism for hosting videos about guns, bombs and other deadly weapons.

For many gun-rights supporters, YouTube has been a haven. A current search on the site for "how to build a gun" yields 25 million results, though that includes items such as toys. At least one producer of gun videos saw its page suspended on Tuesday. Another channel opted to move its videos to an adult-content site, saying that will offer more freedom than YouTube.

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YouTube is the largest video hosting site in the world, it is a site that is owned and operated by Google. Many people are trying to move away from using Google products because of privacy (and now censorship) concerns.

While YouTube's new censorship of firearms videos will certainly hurt many channel operators, there are a number of other video hosting sites that can pick up YouTube's lost business.  Some of these sites are:

Vimeo.
Dailymotion.
Twitch.
LiveLeak.
Veoh.
Break.
Metacafe.
VK.
Brightcove.