YouTube has banned some types of videos about guns, driving producers of those videos to find alternative video-hosting sites — and that alternative has turned out to be porn, BBC News is reporting .
Just about any hobby can find a home on YouTube, from fishing and hunting to quilting and knitting — and everything in between. And gun hobbyists have long found a haven in the video-sharing site, as users such as TarasGuns and others share videos of themselves talking about, using, examining, and generally enjoying their guns.
So far, that hasn’t been a problem for YouTube. Of course, whether the platform will allow those videos to continue, in light of the nation’s changing debate about gun control, remains to be seen.
However, one gun-related activity that has become a problem for YouTube is the modification of guns. It’s possible to modify certain guns in ways that will enable them to shoot more rounds faster, for example, or to add silencers or other modifications to them. And considering that high-capacity, automatic weapons have been used in a couple of recent mass shootings, YouTube has decided that, if nothing else, the optics are bad. So the platform has banned such videos.
Specifically, it’s banned videos that teach how to make firearms or firearm modifications; videos that teach how to install modifying components to guns; videos that teach how to convert guns to automatic or semi-automatic; and videos that are designed to sell guns or modifications.
That’s a problem for gun-video producers such as Karl Kasarda and Ian McCollum, who run the gun review site InRangeTV. They say their modifications are only intended as a hobby, not as instructions on how to commit crimes.
To that end, they’ve found another video-sharing site that will allow them to post their videos: PornHub. And in fact, this writer went to PornHub and, sure enough, a search for “InRangeTV” reveals five gun-related videos — without a single frame of porn in any of them.
McCollum and Kasarda said in a statement that they don’t plan to make money from their gun videos on PornHub. Rather, they simply wanted a platform for their videos, regardless of what that platform is.
“We will not be seeking any monetisation from PornHub… we are merely looking for a safe harbour for our content and for our viewers.”
Gun blogger Joerg Sprave, however, is glad that YouTube is at least giving clear direction on how they want producers of gun-related videos to behave. However, he wants YouTube to allow producers some time to get their videos up to code before deleting videos and demonetizing channels.
“They should at least get some time to clean up their videos so the new rules are kept.”
