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Oct 21, 2024

Gun YouTube creators are leaving the platform as the company cracks down on firearm videos

Some figures in the controversial “GunTuber” community are fleeing YouTube after the platform began cracking down on machine gun videos and the marketing of firearms on the app. At least four large

Some figures in the controversial “GunTuber” community are fleeing YouTube after the platform began cracking down on machine gun videos and the marketing of firearms on the app.

At least four large YouTube channels devoted to firearms have announced they’re quitting the platform and moving to rival services with looser rules. And although many of the biggest channels are continuing to post on YouTube, they’ve been expressing concern that they’re no longer welcome on the video service after it tightened regulation of gun content.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, has for years imposed rules on gun videos. It has long banned the direct sale of firearms on the platform, as well as videos that show how to make firearms and ammunition.

But in June, it kicked off a series of actions that sparked concern among gun creators. One new rule bans content that shows the removal of firearm safety devices. A second new rule limits who can watch videos that show the use of automatic weapons or homemade weapons, so that only people ages 18 or older can see them, and ads cannot run on the videos.

And a third change tackled a gray area: links to sites that sell firearms. Since 2018, YouTube’s firearms policy has told people “don’t post” if their purpose is to sell firearms or to link to sites that sell firearms, but enforcement has been inconsistent. YouTube said it would expand enforcement on content with links to gun retailers, including landing pages to purchase a gun.

The changes have ruffled the feathers of major players in the GunTube community, some of whom have gained millions of subscribers on the platform, secured major partnership deals and worked with YouTube representatives for years.

The tension highlights the large role that YouTube has played for more than a decade in promoting gun culture online, despite the app’s existing restrictions.

“The entire industry feeds off of YouTube, whether they will admit it or not,” Jon Patton, a gun reviewer with 369,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, told the firearms podcast “The Reload” in an August interview.

There are dozens of gun-themed channels with 1 million or more subscribers on YouTube and many more channels with smaller followings. Some focus on reviews of newly made firearms or on historical weapons of war, while others show off favorites from their personal arsenal or use guns to perform stunts like carving a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.

YouTube says gun videos are only one part of its enormous app.

“YouTube is the world’s biggest video library and as a result, home to a huge range of interests and online cultures, from video gaming to music to educational tutorials to sports to podcasts. Responsible firearms content is just one part of this vibrant mix of communities,” the company said in a statement.

Many gun channels are built around sponsorship deals: They get money from retailers or companies that make guns or gun accessories, and in exchange, the channels often share links to those sponsors, sometimes with channel-specific promo codes.

A successful YouTube gun channel can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in ad revenue and sponsorships, Bloomberg News reported this year.

Without YouTube, “it’ll be a much, much different version of the gun industry,” Patton said in the podcast interview, adding that GunTubers will no longer have the resources to create content full time. He did not respond to an interview request.

YouTube’s ban on promotional links is far-reaching, applying to URLs included in video descriptions, graphic overlays and even when someone speaks the URL in a video.

YouTube has not said why it’s stepping up enforcement. A spokesperson said it’s not in reaction to a specific moment or change in law. But the platform has been under pressure for years over its promotion of gun culture from advocacy groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and public officials such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Last year, a new California law took effect allowing lawsuits over “abnormally dangerous” guns — such as those designed for assault, not self-defense — and although a federal judge blocked the law, it would apply even to companies involved in marketing.

YouTube’s gun community got wide attention in July because the gunman who shot at former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania wore a shirt advertising Demolition Ranch, one of the biggest GunTube channels, with 11.8 million subscribers. Matt Carriker, who runs the channel, said after the shooting that he wished he could stop such people from buying his shirts but couldn’t.

Carriker has also criticized YouTube’s increased scrutiny of gun content, complaining in a July video posted days before the Trump rally shooting that the new age requirement for viewing machine gun content “screwed over” his channel because people need to be logged in to prove their age.

“We have a ton of people who watch my videos who do not have YouTube accounts,” he said. A video with an 18-and-over age restriction, he said, “gets less than half the views, like 40% the views, because most people are not logged into an account.”

YouTube says it will make some exceptions to its machine gun rule for films and news content, and Carriker said in his video about the rule change that he’ll try to use those exceptions.

“It’ll be artistic content such as a film. Or maybe we just need to blur every machine gun,” he said. His channel did not respond to a request for further comment.

Other gun creators similarly began posting complaints in July, shortly after the new rules went into effect.

Guns.com, an online retailer, published a “Farewell to YouTube” video last month, and it hasn’t posted since. Its account has 395,000 subscribers and has published 2,341 videos since 2011, but the company now says it will publish all of its new video content to Rumble, a video app with relatively few rules. Rumble has become a popular choice among conservatives and the far right, although its user base is much smaller than YouTube’s.

Alexander Reville, one of Guns.com’s podcasters, said in the video that YouTube suffered from an “environment of increased censorship” and unclear rules.

“You’ve heard the term, ‘moving the goalpost.’ At this point, we’re not even sure there are goalposts,” he said. Guns.com did not respond to a request for further comment.

Several other YouTube channels issued similar declarations. Firearms Guide, with 22,800 subscribers, said it was leaving last month, and it has since been posting on the apps X and Rumble. Old Row Outdoors, a lifestyle brand with 105,000 YouTube subscribers, said it was quitting and moving to Rumble. Joel Persinger, who uses the brand GunGuyTV and has 223,000 subscribers, said he would use YouTube only for interviews about gun rights, not for gun reviews or anything sponsored — which he said was 70%-80% of his past YouTube content. Everything else would be posted on Rumble, he said.

Chris Mijic, editor-in-chief of Firearms Guide, a subscription-only reference guide, said in a phone interview that YouTube had given his channel two strikes — one strike away from a permanent ban. He said that he can’t keep up with YouTube’s rule changes.

“Just because everything’s OK this year doesn’t mean it’s going to be OK next year,” he said.

Persinger said in his video announcement that the rule changes, as he interprets them, prohibit “any kind of review of a firearm or a firearms-related product” where the reviewer endorses the product. “I can’t do any of that, because they will delete it,” he said. In an email, he declined an interview request.

Old Row Outdoors did not respond to a request for further comment.

In a statement, YouTube said it stands behind its rules and needs to change them from time to time.

“These updates to our firearms policy are part of our continued efforts to maintain policies that reflect the current state of content on YouTube,” the company said in a statement to NBC News. “We regularly review our guidelines and consult with outside experts to make sure we are drawing the line at the right place.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group that favors stricter gun regulation, said YouTube has a responsibility to demonetize users who fail to abide by the app’s rules.

“GunTubers have helped push gun culture in a coarser and more dangerous direction — meanwhile, the industry funds it directly through advertising because it knows this cavalier attitude mixed with glorification of guns will encourage people to buy,” Justin Wagner, senior director of investigations at Everytown, said in a statement.

Rumble, which appears to be benefiting from YouTube’s rule-tightening, did not respond to a request for comment. Rumble has been a magnet for others banned from mainstream social media, including white nationalist Nick Fuentes, whose videos sometimes appear on Rumble’s trending list.

One of the biggest YouTube gun accounts, Hickok45, with 7.8 million subscribers, initially read the rule change to mean that it couldn’t have sponsorships at all.

“We are at the risk of losing everything,” said John Kinman, who runs the account with his father, Greg, in a video in July.

In a follow-up video, Greg Kinman said they had “been able to get the attention of the right people at YouTube” and decided to move forward under the new terms of service, but the pair also said they felt they had no viable alternative because so few people are on competitors like Rumble. Their following on YouTube is 348 times the size of their following on Rumble.

“We don’t want to just go into obscurity, and right now YouTube is by far — it is not even close — it is the biggest video-sharing platform,” John Kinman said in the second video.

“I think we’ve made a lot of new gun owners over the years, and I don’t think we would do that if it was on a platform that only gun guys were looking at,” he said.

The Kinmans did not respond to a request for comment.

David Ingram is a tech reporter for NBC News.