YouTube Demonetizing Gun Channels

By Robert Farago via The Truth About Guns

Tim Harmsen from The Military Arms Channel writes:

“Sorry for the late text. I have a story for you. YouTube started demonetizing all gun channels last night. The moment we upload and video to YouTube, the moment it processes it’s immediately demonetized and we’re told we have to request a review after 7 days or 1000 views. This is happening to me, IV8888, Mrgunsngear, Yankee Marshal and every other gun channel I’ve talked to today.” On Facebook, MAC goes on . . .

This is YouTube’s new policy with firearms content. They flag it as not being advertiser friendly right out of the gate. You can request a manual review where a real person looks at it after their bots flag it. No big deal, right? Well, it is a big deal. You can only submit a video for manual review AFTER 7 days or 1000 views.

A video gets most of its monetized views in the first 48 hours. After that a video pretty much gets no views. No ads for the first 7 days means no money and the content creator that talks about guns is effectively screwed.

This is another example of why your support through Patreon is so important to the continued growth of the channel. YouTube is doing everything it can to run gun channels off.

If my Patreon support grows to the point where I can voluntarily demonetize my channel, you won’t have to put up with ads on my YouTube videos going forward. Please consider clicking here to become a Patreon subscriber as there are many perks to doing so besides just supporting the channel. Thanks everyone.

Mr. Harmsen predicts that this move by YouTube will hurt small gun channels the most. But the big gun channels will also be severely affected — depending on the duration of the review cycle.

To tell which gun channels have been [effectively] blacklisted, go to the bottom of the channel and turn on restricted mode. If the channel is demonetized, all the videos will disappear.

TTAG’s YouTube channel has been demonetized. So has the YouTube channel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). Also note: if you turn on restricted mode, none of these channels show up in a YouTube search.

The major manufacturers’ sites — Ruger, GLOCK, etc. — are also affected. About 90 percent of their videos disappear in Restricted Mode.

Interestingly, the NRA’s YouTube channel is NOT affected. Will the NRA go to bat for the small gun channels filtered out of existence by the Google-owned YouTube search engine? Watch this space.