Last week a furious youtuber walked into the company's headquarters in San Bruno
California and shot three employees before killing herself
The shooter claimed that YouTube had been censoring her videos and preventing her from making a living
It's called
demonetization and it's a tool that YouTube is using to clamp down on content that it thinks advertisers could find objectionable
Or they could encourage violence including as it happens videos about guns
In McCullum and carl kisara make gun videos on YouTube their hobbyist gun nerd for Carl
This is a part-time gig and Ian makes gun content for a living.
Yeah. It's reporting okay great, so I'm starting a direction no oh
youtuber: Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video in range TV
They started putting up videos in 2015 and quickly earned a devoted following
So guys don't buy specialized $7 parts to install magazine button releases use your banana
Carl, and IANS channel now has one hundred forty-seven thousand subscribers
Carl's other channel
Forgotten weapons has more than seven hundred thousand subscribers
When you started doing these videos? What was the response that you got?
in range a different part of the
firearms video marketplace that really didn't exist before
Taking these old guns and actually using them practically and actually explain to people this is how this gun would have worked it really caught
On with people I think partially because people use these guns and video games
And they want to go wow what is it?
Fg42 work like or how does an m1 garand work when you're actually trying to hit a target ?
like how much money leaving?
I mean according to YouTube's Terms of Service you are not allowed to discuss what can we make on YouTube?
I'm serious right now
That's actually true in range was not at the point that I would say that you could sustain yourself off. It as a career
No, not remotely close
but it certainly paid for the project
After major advertisers complained about their ads running against controversial content YouTube started to demonetize
Blocking certain videos from generating ad
That made it harder for Carl and Ian to make money
to me it felt like
Advertising money was used being used as a control tool and that it told the line, or you don't get Monica monetization
And if I don't take kindly to that sort of thing so at that point pretty much said I don't want it
I don't want your advertising money. I realized that the customer wasn't the viewer and it wasn't me
It was the advertiser and I didn't want to be their product so by
demonetizing the channel entirely we went to a fully crowd-sourced funding
solution only
Saying pretty much to the viewer if you want this project to survive and you like it and you have to support it this
Breaks the chains of control that the advertising money could be used against us
in range TV has survived
demonitazation for now they have about 5,000 patreon supporters who give a few dollars each month
But that support could go away any time
Losing the ad dollars means they can't count on steady income from their video views and now in the wake of the parkland school shooting
YouTube has issued even stricter rules for gun content
Which will go into effect later this month and right now in range is breaking at least two of those rules
First they went to sites of niche gun sellers who send them expensive and rare weapons to demo
It's like the Luger they were shooting here
base price on this is 5800
They also feature high-capacity magazines like this vintage barrel
This holds 32 rounds it was used in the Luger near artillery Luger as well as the mp18
submachine gun, which was one of their secret weapons
We asked youtube if it decided to make this change the company responded it quote
routinely makes updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies and
Confirmed that the new policy would go into effect later this month but that's not really an answer
My question to YouTube is why do you have specific policies for firearms related content when there's a lot of other content on your network?
That is demonstrable dangerous people that are saying things like for example
Drink turpentine for better health and with a link in their description below to where you should buy turpentine
If he can link to a place to sell turpentine and promote the consumption of turpentine in his video series
Why is it now a problem for me by policy to link to someone selling an optic for a fire?
Why do you think YouTube thinks guns are controversial because?
Really
Blatantly obvious question
think it's one of the same.
So we've had some things that have happened in history or news they effects corporate policy the problem isn't that
There's a cultural distinction here or there about whether firearm should or should not be controversial
What concerns me is the amount of control things like YouTube Facebook the alphabet Corp have
Over whether or not you have a voice on the internet about legal content
Trump and his Justice Department are moving to ban stocks
What have you we're making videos with bump stocks?
So what should youtube do?
well watching a video is not an illegal act
learning information or learning about how things work should not be an illegal act unless we're wanting to move into a Dark Age if we
really want to call information dangerous
Where does that stop?
You