SUPPORT JOURNALISM. Become a patron athttp://www.patreon.com/TimcastMy Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastYoutube announced new rules aimed at fire/\arms channels. You'll notice the /\ in the word and that is due to robots trying to restrict videos based on certain words.Fire/\arms are legal and it is legal to purchase accessories yet Youtube has determined that these channels should be further sanctioned. What will the impact be on policy?If no one can hear an idea or learn about something how can they vote effectively? Why are some channels, like news, exempt from many of these rules? Make sure to subscribe for more travel, news, opinion, and documentary with Tim Pool everyday.Amazon Prime 30 day free trial - http://amzn.to/2sgiDqRMY GEARGoPro Karma - http://amzn.to/2qw10m4GoPro 6 - http://amzn.to/2CEK0z1DJI Mavic Drone - http://amzn.to/2lX9qgTZagg 12 AMP portable battery - http://amzn.to/2lXB6SxTASCAM Lavalier mic - http://amzn.to/2AwoIhI Canon HD XF 105 Camera - http://amzn.to/2m6v1o3Canon 5D MK III Camera - http://amzn.to/2CvFnnm360 Camera (VR) - http://amzn.to/2AxKu4RFOLLOW MEInstagram - http://instagram.com/TimcastTwitter - http://twitter.com/TimcastMinds - http://Minds.com/TimcastFacebook - http://facebook.com/TimcastnewsBitcoin Wallet: 13ha54MW2hYUS3q1jJhFyWdpNfdfMWtmhZSEND STUFF HERETim Pool330 Washington Street - PMB 517Hoboken, NJ 07030Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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I made a lot of videos criticizing YouTube and highlighting some of the big problems facing creators and the general public due to censorship.
And I always say that YouTube is a net positive.
The reason I say this is because I am able to bring you videos, and so are many other people who normally would not have a voice or an opportunity to publish content to a large audience.
YouTube will suggest my videos to new people, allowing my videos to reach a larger and larger audience, and that's pretty awesome.
But, with recent developments, it would seem like YouTube might slowly become a net negative, and we might be walking into that territory right now.
I've talked recently about how some news organizations are able to publish videos even though YouTube has deemed the original video to be inappropriate or essentially hate speech, that someone could upload a video, it'll get restricted, but a news organization will upload the same video and it's totally fine.
Now we're hearing that YouTube is pushing itself further into the gun debate
by creating new rules to restrict channels that feature guns.
Now I know there's a lot of people who might say, so what?
YouTube's, you know, it's a private company.
If they don't want people using guns on their platform, then so be it.
But I want to tell you why that's so dangerous, and it's not about guns.
It's about policy.
It's about YouTube being so large it can influence our society and our government.
But before I do that...
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First, let's look at what happened in the news from Bloomberg Technology.
YouTube bans firearms demo videos, entering the gun control debate.
YouTube this week quietly introduced tighter restrictions on videos involving weapons, becoming the latest battleground in the US gun control debate.
YouTube will ban videos that promote or link to websites selling firearms and accessories, including bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire faster.
Additionally, YouTube said that it will prohibit videos with the instructions on how to assemble firearms.
The video site, owned by Alphabet Inc's Google, has faced intense criticism for hosting videos about guns, bombs, and other deadly weapons.
A YouTube spokeswoman said, We routinely make updates and adjustments to our
enforcement guidelines across all of our policies.
While we've long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making
around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories.
Many gun channels on YouTube are alarmed by this, and I think rightly so.
They feel that they're going to be targeted and have their videos restricted or banned, not just because they're, say, linking to a manufacturer or a company that sells firearms or accessories, but maybe something broader.
Maybe something will be interpreted as assembly.
Maybe something will be interpreted as selling something or pitching something.
This also means that gun channels can't take sponsorships from gun manufacturers or companies that sell accessories.
Many of these channels, many channels on YouTube, will be sponsored by a brand.
Like my channel has sponsors, my channel runs ads.
And certainly a gun channel is going to have a company that sells accessories and some kind of
tool or equipment for gun enthusiasts.
They're going to sponsor these channels.
And if they can't link to those channels, they can't take sponsorship.
And there's also the probability that outside of that, they could be restricted or banned outright.
One such channel is InRangeTV, with 144,000 subscribers.
If you've been following my channel for a while, you'll know that I actually did an interview with one of the guys from InRange when I was in Las Vegas during DEF CON, the hacker convention.
Many people went out into the desert and fired some pretty high-powered guns.
It was a pretty cool sight.
It was all legal.
It was a normal shooting range setup.
And they do this every year at DEFCON.
And we talked about it.
Well, this creator is now facing potential sanctions because of new YouTube policies.
So what did InRangeTV do?
They moved to Pornhub.
I kid you not, InRangeTV is now posting their videos to Pornhub out of fear of being restricted.
And you can see on these videos, 95% thumbs up, 98% thumbs up, several thousand views.
One of their videos already has 7,000 views on Pornhub.
Is it possible that Pornhub will be a better hub for free expression and legal videos than YouTube?
These videos are legal.
Guns are legal in this country.
Accessories are legal.
YouTube is taking a business decision to restrict this kind of content.
So naturally, they'll move to a different platform.
Will this damage YouTube, or does YouTube care?
I don't know.
I think we'll have to see what happens in the long run.
YouTube's newly released vague and one-sided firearms policy makes it abundantly clear that YouTube cannot be counted upon to be a safe harbor for a wide variety of views and subject matter, InRangeTV wrote.
Pornhub has a history of being a proactive voice in the online community, as well as operating a resilient and robust video streaming platform.
Pornhub didn't immediately return a request for comment on the matter.
So let's go back to what I was talking about yesterday because, sure enough, this is all connected.
Yesterday, I talked about how Count Dankula, a YouTuber based in the UK, was charged with being grossly offensive.
He was convicted of a crime for making an offensive video where he taught his girlfriend's dog To salute Hitler and say some offensive things.
Aside from the absurdity of someone getting convicted for making a terrible joke, what I wanted to point out is that the original video of the Nazi dog is restricted on YouTube.
That means comments are disabled, sharing is disabled, and you have to acknowledge the video is inappropriate if you want to watch it.
You can pretty much only find it if you have the link.
Yet, Clips of the same video showing the exact same thing exist on many mainstream and large news outlet YouTube channels.
So if the content itself is allowed to be published, it would seem that it's not the content that is offensive, it's the act of creating and uploading together.
I'm trying to figure out how this makes sense.
And as we move into the discussion about guns, we can take another example.
Certainly, you are not allowed to show people how to make weapons on YouTube.
If you made a video and said, here's how to make a bomb, YouTube's gonna be like, get that off my platform.
And now they're saying if you show people how to assemble a firearm, you will also get restricted or removed from YouTube.
But what if a large news outlet showed people how to improvise some kind of rifle or showed people how to actually make a bomb?
Well, it's true.
It exists.
And you know why?
I'm the one who made it.
In a video that I produced for Vice, with 170,000 views, you can see there's me, there's the Vice logo, and this is an explosive.
And in this Vice video, I am explaining how to make it, how it works, and how easy it is.
And because I don't want my channel getting banned, I'm not going to explain how the explosive worked.
In this clip, you can see me and researcher Evan Booth as he puts together his makeshift gun.
I am literally, in this video, explaining how it was made, what it's made of, how it fires, and how to make the bolt that it actually does fire.
It's gonna fire like a gun.
This video was published December 27th, 2013.
That was nearly four years ago.
We made this video, showing people how to make weapons in an airport, no less.
And it was considered totally fine.
The original video made by Evan Booth, depicting how he made the explosive, was removed by YouTube.
But when we, a media company, Did a story ON someone making it, that was totally fine.
It seems like there's a huge problem in how YouTube actually enforces these rules.
And now creators who are pro-gun, they're gun enthusiasts, are going to face the brunt of a change in these policies.
But I assure you, videos like this, videos I have made, and from news organizations, showing the exact same thing will be fine.
And that presents us with a problem.
You can't have two channels showing the same thing, but only one of them gets banned.
But it's actually worse than just a double standard.
One of the problems we face here is that guns are legal in this country.
I don't have a leg in this gun debate.
I'm not for or against.
I try to stay out of it.
But what I can say is, YouTube is not being neutral in this case.
We saw not too long ago that Google had banned the word gun on Google Shopping.
And it had been banned for years!
Because of this, many things that were not guns were also banned inadvertently, like maps of Gunnison, Colorado, or Gundam Wing, an extremely popular anime.
You couldn't search for these things, because their algorithm just blocked anything that contained the three letters G-U-N.
But why is that a problem for YouTube?
This isn't shopping.
Well, look, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and YouTube has decided to remove a particular type of content, even if it's legal.
What that means is the average person who searches for things is not going to see these and it will have a large impact on how the public perceives these problems and how they feel about policy and what needs to be changed.
I know there's always the argument You know, Google, YouTube, they're private platforms.
They can enforce their rules how they want to enforce them.
If there's a double standard, well, tough luck!
It's their platform.
They can enforce it how they see fit.
If they want to remove guns, so be it.
The problem arises when you realize that Google and YouTube are the first and second largest search engines.
And this is why I don't consider myself to be a right-leaning person.
Not the only reason.
But what happens when a company becomes so large that the information we collect on a daily basis is coming from one authority, one system, Google?
And Google has a small group of individuals who can set policy decisions and determine what is or is not available to be learned about.
Are we going to end up like China, where we have the Great Firewall, where certain things are removed from search?
Because certainly that is the case with YouTube.
If YouTube says these legal practices and these legal products are not allowed, they are stepping beyond the bounds of the law.
They are asserting their personal values into how we should be consuming data.
And that presents us with a large problem because it's going to have a stronger impact than laws will.
If you are a free market capitalist and you think that YouTube should be able to function how they see fit, more power to you.
But I just want to point out the problem that arises when YouTube has such powerful control over what we can say and what we can see, as does Facebook, as does Twitter, we have no way to vote on what should or should not be allowed.
And our political discussions are taking place on these platforms.
We are going to end up omitting many ideas from discourse.
Homogenizing our culture is not a good idea.
But if YouTube begins removing content because it's scared of losing advertisers or, for whatever reason, it violates the principles of the people who work at YouTube, then these bits of information, these ideas, will be removed from public discourse.
And that means the debate in policy will be swayed in one direction.
Ultimately, these large social media networks are controlling the public discourse, whether it's on purpose or it's an accident.
Maybe they're just trying to protect their bottom line, so certain things are considered wrong or hateful.
What's going to happen then?
Our government, the laws we vote on, will move in a similar direction based on the perception of individuals who consume information through these platforms and what information is restricted.
I've been watching problems like this for a while now, and it just feels like dominoes are falling down.
I don't think there's anybody at Google twirling their mustache as some supervillain who thinks that they're gonna rule the world.
I don't even think there's a group of people who think they're in the right and trying to make the world a better place.
I think it's simply about advertisers.
And advertisers get scared, so Google reacts.
And we are pushing ourselves in this direction.
We're slowly going to remove anything considered offensive.
And everything can be considered offensive.
Somebody making a video about barbecued chicken could be offensive to vegans.
Do we then say that's grossly offensive?
And we remove that content as well?
Who draws the line?
Who determines what is too offensive and what isn't?
Who determines what should or should not be available for us to learn about?
Certainly, someone making a video assembling a firearm, that's educational content.
Firearms are legal.
It might go against the values of YouTube, but it is legal content.
In which case, YouTube has decided that their values, because of maybe advertisers, or because of their values, because of this, they are going to restrict certain information.
And that is censorship.
And that actually is scary if you think about, if that trend continues, where will we be in 10 years?
In 20 years?
Especially when we add on.
That news organizations are apparently exempt from this.
We will have a group of thought leaders, specific companies that are allowed to say certain things and other individuals are not going to be allowed to.
But let me know what you think in the comments below.
I'm sort of shifting now from the YouTube problems and into the gun debate because this weekend is the March for Our Lives, a major protest in Washington, D.C.
And I will be down there covering it, so stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4 p.m.
Comment below and let me know what you think about this.
I know a lot of people are really angry that these channels are being banned, especially conservatives, pro-Second Amendment activists, but I think anybody should be alarmed when a company decides that something doesn't fit their values or a certain idea, even though it's legal, should be removed.
