YouTube Brownells Ban Social Media Guns
courtesy Facebook.com

The gradual, incremental, persistent, unrelenting “other”-ing of guns and those who sell, shoot, broadcast and write about them continues apace. The latest victim: Brownells. Yes, the notoriously radical, fire-breathing Iowa-based retailer has had their YouTube page deleted by the don’t-be-evil types who run YouTube, the Google-owned video platform.

Brownells just announced the move on their Facebook page and had this to say on Twitter (while both of those social media channels remain open to them):

TTAG got this statement from Ryan Repp, Brownells’ director of content and communications:

We conducted a review of our YouTube account in March to ensure compliance with YouTube’s new firearm content policy.

We had received no indications that our account was in violation until Saturday Morning, June 9, when we discovered the Brownells account had been terminated.

We will obviously appeal and we’d appreciate the gun community’s support with providing feedback to Google/YouTube.

If you’re one of Brownells’ tens of thousands of happy customers, you may want to let Google and YouTube know what you think.

The only question is…who’s next? Somehow we’re thinking Dick’s Sporting Goods is safe for now.

 

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135 COMMENTS

  1. I see it from both sides…You-Tube has the right to not show whatever they want…like a store can refuse service.
    Silly…but some other service needs to step up and support.

      • They refused to bake ‘a custom cake’that violated their religious beliefs and the evidence that the whole incident was a leftist setup was the reason behind the 7-2 decision.GET EDUCATED you fools.

        • Yes, I love how difficult it is to find the details of the actual ‘custom cake request’ online, which was, if I recall right, a Bible-shaped cake with two verses related to same-sex marriage arguments with a big red ‘X’ through them and two groom figures standing atop the Bible. Also, and again, if I recall right, the baker offered to make the Bible-shaped cake and provide the frosting to allow the individuals to write in the verses and ‘X’ on their own.

          This is an issue I’m more indifferent on than anything… but the entire ordeal was a big setup – the couple was completely poised to jump all over the bakery even when they were offered accommodation.

        • “if I recall right, a Bible-shaped cake with two verses related to same-sex marriage arguments with a big red ‘X’ through them and two groom figures standing atop the Bible.”

          Got a link for that?

        • The homosexuals who demanded the baker create a “same sex wedding cake” bypassed a half-dozen other bakeries who would produce the cake. Their goal was to target a Christian business for destruction. The “supreme court” should have ruled that baking and designing the cake for these homosexuals constituted “involuntary servitude” and is thereby unconstitutional. Of course, that would have invalidated all “public accommodation statutes and laws…

        • No, the reason for the 7-2 decision was that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission made openly hostile statement toward Mr. Phillips’ religion, NOT because it was “a setup.” In fact, the SCOTUS ruling makes no decision whatsoever about whether refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple is protected by “religious beliefs.” In fact, decades old precedent says otherwise. Specifically , Newman v Piggy Park Enterprises, Inc., in which a BBQ restaurant owner refused to serve blacks because of “religious beliefs.”

          “Undoubtedly defendant Bessinger has a constitutional right to espouse the religious beliefs of his own choosing, however, he does not have the absolute right to exercise and practice such beliefs in utter disregard of the clear constitutional rights of other citizens. This court refuses to lend credence or support to his position that he has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of the Negro race in his business establishments upon the ground that to do so would violate his sacred religious beliefs.”

      • Yes. Google/YT are punk liberals, to be sure. Still, it’s the free market of ideas. Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred ideas contend. If they choose to turn their platform into a rank weed garden, then so be it. It’s their property.

        • “Yes. Google/YT are punk liberals, to be sure. Still, it’s the free market of ideas. Let a hundred flowers bloom.”

          H’mm.

          If they called themselves “ProgressiveTube'”, I could see that line of reasoning.

          They are called “YouTube”, and that implies inclusive content. I would hope you would agree that Brownell’s channel content is non-political or inflammatory in what they present. It’s mostly demonstration videos for *legal* products that they sell.

          Johnathan, YouTube is trying to have their cake and eat it too. I find myself in agreement with PwrSerge’s position that YouTube has become the equivalent of a public square based on the percentage of the market they hold and needs to be held non-discriminatory in the hosting of their content.

          Oh, and that goes especially for their monetization policies.

          If they monetize some channel content, the should monetize *all* channel content on their website. Fair is fair, as the Progressives like to say.

          To not do so is clearly favoritism…

        • Geoff:
          “They are called “YouTube”, and that implies inclusive content. ”
          And “Tranny Man Transmissions” implies… what, exactly?
          Your argument is as fictitious as the name of both.

      • Easy Day
        Libertarians support voluntarily racial discrimination against black people. They say the free market should decide. Correct???

        Just like a Christian baker correct???

        Libertarians are really proud of themselves until their ox is gored. There are many “pro business” socialist progressives who totally support their vision of “utopian” government. California is an example of that utopian government.

        • Ummm… libertarians do not support racial discrimination. I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s very wrong. Libertarians advocate freedom. That freedom includes the right to be a disgusting bigot, if one so chooses. But just because freedom must exist before bigotry can exist, does not mean advocating freedom means you advocate bigotry.

        • Chris, that read a rather schizophrenic. I am not at all sure what you were writing about much less what your point was.
          Racism has never been a component of libertarian philosophy. If you posit that it is, please explain and cite references.

        • To any Libertarian
          amendment 1
          “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

          1. Where does it say your belief system stops and ends inside a house of worship?

          2. Where does it say a believer has to do what the government tells them to do, like bake a cake, under the threat of an armed government agent?

          Just as Liberals and the Left pervert the second amendment to mean only the government can have guns. Libertarians pervert the first amendment to mean believers can’t practice their faith outside of a house of worship.

          Why do Libertarians think its ok to voluntarily discriminate against a black person in business but a christian baker can’t discriminate?????
          Personally I like to go back to the days when a black person got all their guns thru mail order with direct delivery to their homes, since white gun store owners refused to sell them guns. Back then you could get a machine gun delivered to the house!!!

          Christians have proven they will support a christian business back when gov mike Huckabee asked believers to support the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A, when its owners 1st amendment right was attacked by the Left. That display of economic power was very frightening to the three L’s.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick-fil-A#Response

          “A consulting firm estimated that the average Chick-fil-A restaurant had 29.9 percent more sales and 367 more customers than it did on a typical Wednesday.”

          There are religious beliefs I totally reject. And I don’t need government to help me do that. That does not make me or any one else a bigot. Unless you are one or those who wants to use the force of government “to help you reject” the beliefs of others.

          The supreme court has become in the eyes of some, the priests in the song 2112. The second amendment is our call to the solar federation. The song has a rather violent ending. I hope it doesn’t come to that.

          You must feel guilty if you believe I called libertarians racists. I would say most are not. But the fact remains voluntary discrimination, by nearly the entire US population, against black people is a legacy that has been very difficult to overcome. But its not impossible to over come fortunately. (smile)

          When all banks totally discriminate against firearm businesses will see if libertarians still hold to their beliefs.

      • @Easy Day
        Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but yes, a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding if they choose, just like a gay guy who owns a bakery can refuse to make a wedding cake for a Christian wedding. If someone has a problem with that, then just go to another bakery. If you can’t find another one, then tough sh@t. Make lasagna.

        • If only that were true Boba. Title II of the ’64 civil rights act implied that bakeries (among most other private businesses) are ‘public accommodations’ and can be punished for discriminating against “protected classes”. The most recent ruling from the SCOTUS on it did nothing to change that

      • Yes, just like a bakery can refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Right?

        Actually, that question hasn’t yet been decided yet, judicially.

        But they probably can’t if the bakery is an effective monopoly. Youtube is effectively a monopoly and they are using their dominant position to infringe free speech on legal activities. And no one is forcing youtube or its employees to violate their religious tenets.

      • Nobody is asking youtube to bake a cake. Just let everyone use the virtual soapbox in the virtual public accommodation that is youtube (And every other social media site.)

      • Easy Day,

        You are either ignorant or you knowingly obfuscate. You know well which it is.

        Jack Phillips did not refuse to sell the gay couple anything in the store or make a more generic cake. He refused to make a specific piece of art. Do you think a Gulag survivor immigrant artist has the right to refuse service to 2 American “Progressives” demanding he make a portrait of them with a picture of Stalin hanging behind them?

      • ‘Yes, just like a bakery can refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Right?”

        so you’re saying that Youtube pulled the account based upon religious beliefs? wonder what Youtube’s sincerely held religious beliefs are?

        now go research the “bake the cake” case and get the facts.

    • They have the right to show the content they wish, but we as the consumers have the right to complain about it.

    • Not anymore. Youtube has become too important to speech to be arbitrarily deleting speech.

      • Bullshit. In what sane world should the free expression and association rights of a business be violated based on their success? By making arguments like this you are playing right into the hands of those who would love to have the government standing on top of every media institution, telling it what it must and cannot say.

        • Usually the line is drawn when the product or service is a monopoly and John Doe isn’t allowed to function without it. Just about every computer in the world has some flavor of Windows, unless you are in a tech environment. Microsoft doesn’t get to decide what software is and isn’t allowed to run on the platform.

          Youtube isn’t a monopoly but it is getting fairly close. The service is more akin to a common carrier (your ISP) and should not be allowed to discriminate against traffic and views. Neither should any social media “platform” which is essentially an open podium in the middle of a public square. Just imagine if your ISP, which is often also a private business, was allowed to filter and restrict your opinions and content. Most places have 1-2 ISPs and no other choices.

          If youtube wants to discriminate, they need to close their service off to the public, and turn it into an invite only club where you have to be approved before allowed in. Otherwise, “private business” does not afford protection in such cases.

    • I would agree with you except that Youtube/Google/… have broad immunity from copyright laws for items that are posted by third parties (as long as they take them down). Either they have special protections from the government or their businesses evaporate instantaneously. If the government is going to give them special protections then shouldn’t they be subject to some sort of regulation as to what they can exclude from their platforms?

      Think of it this way. Your electric utility is a private business that gets special monopoly exemptions (anti-trust), but in return rates are regulated and it can’t refuse to sell you electricity because of your religious beliefs (unless those religious beliefs prevent you from paying your bill…).

    • If the want to act like a publisher then they need to be regulated like one. They pretend to be a “tech company” while acting as a publisher.

    • Wrong… Censorship and gun-grabbing are an attack on western values and civilization and cannot be tolerated. Nobody has the right to undermine our country & Constitution and we are NOT obligated to allow it. There is no non-aggression principle in play here! We are at WAR.

    • You must be blind in one eye….. Utube has ZERO religious grounds but they do have an axe to grind. they are doing their best to dump conservatives before the elections so that they can become the Liberal pipeline.
      “This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future.” Adolf Hitler, 1935. Not long before he invaded Poland
      Those who fail to LEARN from history are doomed to repeat it.

  2. Progressives are so assured of their own correctness in all things that they feel they have a moral right to place their values above everyone else’s. This kind of behavior also says something about the management structure at Google: nobody’s really in charge there.

    • ” ……. They believe themselves correct IN ALL THINGS ”
      Some of you will notice that this is not just about isolating gun owners , but is in fact a wide spread Radical Leftist – Socialist program and METHODOLOGY underway to silence any opinion that goes against The Collective.
      Watch this May 3 , Council on Foreign Relations ( Progressive Think Tank with major MSM ties ) meeting on ” Combating Disinformation + Fake News ” ….. where the panelists smugly declare that only THEY should be the judges of TRUTH !!! — ( Fat girl even says .. ” We Collectively decide whats TRUE ” )

      Don’t miss the irony that they disabled comment on their own video !

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu64HP-PL40

      • Edit to add …… starting at the 8 min. 30 sec. mark , the panelist is unhappy that in the aftermath of a mass shooting people would CHALLENGE and not trust the gatekeepers narrative. — ( They also seem to confuse spoofing and sarcastic comments with actual fact reporting by ‘ Freelance Citizen Journalists ‘ )

    • Brownells was using someone else’s property (YouTube servers) to educate and promote their products. Brownells could just add a section to their own website and host their own videos.

  4. It must be all of their gun smithing videos showing people how to build or repair those evil guns! I have a feeling that there is an organized effort by the grabbers–maybe the Hoggettes–to file complaints against every YouTube channel that features firearms. That in turn triggers some computer program to shut them down without human intervention. And of course, even when contacted, the humans are disinclined to assist.

  6. Let Youtube ban companies that have the resources and the big business partners to form a new, pro-gun online community. Youtube is opening the door, and we have to walk through it.

    Hoping for Youtube to support our rights is like hoping for cops to stop an active shooter. It isn’t going to happen, folks. We are our own first responders.

    • Ghettoizing the gun community is not a solution. Forcing companies to live up to their agreement to be content neutral platforms in order to be DMCA protections IS a solution.

        • No YouTube contract has exclusivity provisions. In any case, it’s a moot point as YouTube does NOT have the right to editorialize their content if they want DMCA protections. (Without which, they couldn’t function.)

      • Whats the viability of all the companies and sites kicked off of YT to file a class action lawsuit for about $5billion and forcing YT to justify not kicking off other sites that could be even more destructive and to prove the gun sites are worse?

        • Plenty of viability.

          The fact that they haven’t done so does not speak well of our side, which inevitably says:

          “It’s their platform. They can do whatever they want.”

          The left has won innumerable victories because they don’t subscribe to this idiotic defeatist notion.

        • Conservative Prager University had a lawsuit against Google this year and had liberal (not leftist) Allen Deshowitz as council. They lost even though it was clear as day they were being discrminated gainst on purely political motives.

          Google has grown to the point that an anti-trust action will be the only solution to force them to clean up their act. However that will be impossible because the Deep State is just fine with Google’s actions.

      • I bet it’s the links to their products that got them canned. Even military arms channel is not linking to Tim’s Gun Store.

  8. I just pulled up some brownels videos and the first one was how to build an AR15

    • I see now that they are brownells videos posted by someone else. They are not on Brownells channel.

  9. Most of these bigger companies already offer where you can round up your purchase price to the next dollar for NRA support. I would not be opposed to rounding up the next dollar if they used the money to come up with a good platform to make a “gun friendly YouTube”. There are some okay options out there now but they lack the sustained financial backing that it takes to make it mainstream. But we have seen the type of money these companies can donate when they allow the customer to round up for a common goal.

  10. Everything google, is evil. Perhaps the feds can intervene on some kind of monopoly laws?

    • You also have Search Engine types like: “Bing”, “Yahoo”, “Bufkko”, “ChrunchBase”, “DuckDuckGo”, “Wolfram-Alpha”, “Quantcast”, “Broadreader”, “BuzzSumo”, “CC Search”, “SocialMedia”, “Technorati” and “Topsy”! Are you going to Police THEM too…

      • If they use the DMCA as a shield to civil litigation? Yes. Yes we are. See my post below about how these companies gave up their private business right to censor when they accepted DMCA protections.

      • Of all those sites you mention, I think duckduckgo is the best and the only one I use. Don’t get me started on the fact checker sights. As far I know, they are all liberal POS’s who are great at lying. When I want something fact checked, I do it myself.

        • What is stopping some conservative organization from having a fact checking site? If there was really a problem with those other sites, it would be easy.

      • At least three of those, Bing, modern Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, are literally the same search engine.

        • @ Nanashi

          OK! And the fact that “The Truth About Guns”, “The Range Report” and “The Shooter’s Log” all come to me by way of the “Word Press”! I should assume that the Word Press is the actual source of the Information…

      • Not sure why you included Duck Duck Go (a genuinely anonymous browser which protects you on the web) in the list. Supposedly, StartPage is anonymous, but it’s “powered by Google”. So how real is that?

        • “Supposedly, StartPage is anonymous, but it’s “powered by Google”. So how real is that?”

          Well, let’s see what StartPage says about that. Hmmm…

          “StartPage acts as an intermediary between you and Google. Google only sees us, they never see you. When you enter a search, we submit it to Google for you, so Google only sees that StartPage is searching for something. We get the results, strip out the tracking cookies, and deliver completely private, anonymous search results to you. We never store your IP address or other personal information, and we never hand it off to Google. You remain completely invisible.”

          Get it now? I haven’t sent a search directly to Google in years – all of mine go through StartPage.

  11. I really wish somebody would start a “GunTube” site so that we can watch firearm related videos without liberal censorship.

    • Full30 is exactly that.

      There’s also BitChute which is more than guns and feels a lot like what YouTube was when it first started. Just go in with your bullshit filters up because a lot of the content on BitChute right now is baseless conspiracy theory videos.

    • @The dude, That is the best idea I’ve seen here. I believe it would be an instant success. The dude abides.

  12. The issue with YouTube censoring speech they don’t agree with is that they have transcended being one outlet for speech/expression. YouTube is the ONLY way to broadcast longform content freely and openly on the internet today, other services exist but are orders of magnitude smaller in reach and technical capability. When YouTube kicks people off, it’s not like not being invited to an interview on one of hundreds of TV stations, it’s akin to being banned from going on TV at all. People constantly defend YouTube by saying that “If the government isn’t censoring you then it’s not a free speech issue” but that doesn’t account for the fact that YouTube (and Google by extension) has greater control of what will be seen and heard than the government does, and can be just as censorious and damaging to free expression.

  13. Yet another reason why social media companies need severe government regulation. Right now, they have used the protection of DMCA to corner the market and avoid liability. The way I see it, YouTube lost 99% of their “private business” rights when they claimed to be a content neutral platform to fall under DMCA protections. Sorry kiddies, you can’t have it both ways. Either you’re a content neutral platform and are not liable for people’s content on your platform or you are a publisher and are subject to civil action over copyright violations on your platform. (They know the latter would make their platforms impossible to maintain, so they are trying to have their cake and eat it.)

  14. Their company, their rules. They get to decide what goes up, and they have. Which makes me wonder why our President and the Department of Justice doesn’t get off their fat asses and put the executives of YouTube in Camp Xray. After all, the Boston bombers received their training on how to build their bomb as well as well as their radicalisation directly from YouTube. There is no statute of limitations on murder. YouTube executives directly supported terrorism. They need to be treated like the terrorist they are.
    If they are going to pick and choose what goes up and who gets to watch it, they need to be held accountable for their crimes.

    • That’s the core of my argument. YouTube hides behind the DMCA to avoid legal liability for what’s on their platform. By doing so, they wave any editorial powers over said platform. Either we rescind the DMCA and let YouTube be sued out of existence or we force them to actually be the content neutral platforms that they claim to be.

      • pwrserge, just as a dumb question, but have you actually seen the video that sparked the YouTube policy change (I’m sure it was not the only one, but I was from a MAJOR gun channel). There were links on YouTube to the products demonstrated in the video. I think the links sparked the policy change.

        The same video used to be on Full30 (I found the an archive link that still points to a thumbnail of the video on Full30). Now I fully understand why that video was voluntarily pulled, the content creators do NOT want to get hit with a political shitstorm.

        But the fact that the video was also (voluntarily) pulled from Full30 it is one of the reasons I find Tim’s high horse opinion of YouTube’s stance kind of funny. I would love to see Tim reproduce that video, but if he did, I would put him in the same position as the producers of the original video. But if Tim is not willing to reproduce that video in question, why the hell should Youtube (with it’s VERY deep pockets) be willing to place themselves in the same position? At least if there are NO links, YouTube can deny previous knowledge in case a similar video is ever published.

        And yes, the DMCA should “shield” Youtube, but ONLY if they do not have knowledge of the post, thus the no link policy.

        • YouTube only falls under DMCA protections if they are, in fact, a “neutral” content platform. Clearly, with their harassment of people whose opinions they don’t agree with (PragerU, gun channels, etc…) they have proven themselves not to be such a platform. That’s the core of the problem. YouTube is claiming DMCA protections and then proceeding to behave like an entity to whom DMCA protections do not apply.

        • Then have Brownells pull their links to they products. YouTube is a speech platform, but I don’t think that controlling what is SOLD and what is said are one in the same.

          And nice avoiding the real question, you sure you are not planning on running for office.

          And like I said, once you “know” what is on your site, DMCA will not protect you. And there is NO way YouTube can argue about not knowing what links off the site.

        • Again… irrelevant. Selling gun parts is not a DMCA violation. The fact that they claim DMCA protections mean they lose their right to editorialize content that does not violate the DMCA. That’s what it means to be a “neutral platform”.

    • What seems to be left out here is: since google/youtube have clearly gotten whatever they want, whenever they want it, from the US government just how are they to be held accountable for their clearly illegal actions? When the (in)justice system refuses to hold criminals to account for illegal actions, just what recourse do honest citizens have?
      Complaining on comment boards like this one has little effect on google’s decisions. What might we be able to do that would?

      • Refuse to pander to them. Use Mozilla Firefox for your browser. Use DuckDuckGo as your search engine; don’t do business with their known affiliates. Do not even think of using “G” mail for your E correspondence.
        Get the apathetic ones to do likewise. They only understand profit, so hit ’em where it hurts – in their wallets.

    • Pornhub pulled a bunch of “channels” off of their thing too. Until there’s an actual guntube or some sort of right wing operated platform that lets all people’s content on without any censorship, this problem will continue.

  16. Let the free market decide. If there is money to be made, then another service will benefit from YouTubes termination of Brownell’s.

    That’s the bedrock principle of our economy. Don’t given in to regulatory punishments and the like!

    • Again… sites like this can’t function without the DMCA. In order to qualify for the DMCA they wave their “right” to editorial control.

    • YouTube has never generated a cent of profit. It has always lost money. Hosting videos is hideously expensive and advertising can only recoup some of the costs. There’s a reason most videos on Full30 aren’t in 1080p, let alone 4K resolution. They’re barely able to sustain the costs of hosting 720p videos uploaded by channels that have to be invited to the platform first. If Full30 opened uploads up to the public, the service would quickly be overburdened and the costs of expanding storage and bandwidth would bankrupt Full30.

      What may be a better alternative is to have a meta video site that links to a bunch of different independent video content hosts like Full30, bitchute, pornhub, etc and allows for a user’s subscriptions to those various sites to all be in one convenient place. Done right, it could rival the advantages of YouTube with a tiny fraction of the upkeep costs since the meta site itself isn’t hosting the videos themselves. The actual content hosting sites would benefit from the increased traffic though, so it’s a net benefit.

  18. It’s a plan by YouTube to systematically remove and then reinstate gun channels, until they take the hint they are not welcome and leave. It’s like your boss at work suspending you for no reason, writing you up repeatedly, etc. until you decide to quit. I think YouTube will reinstate Brownell’s because the purpose is to push channel contributors into leaving “voluntarily”, so they don’t have to explain why they banned them.

  19. I actually don’t give a damn about this.

    The sooner Google becomes a leftist echo chamber the sooner they become irrelevant.

    I saw an interesting discussion on a Y combinator site the other day. A group of developers is working on an application development framework that distributes compute/connectivity/storage allowing app developers to build applications that are not dependent on a centralized cloud infrastructure. The technology is in its infancy and relies heavily on bittorrent and blockchain technologies – but the end result will be a new world of apps that scales with your end users – and does not need Azure, AWS or Google.

    We may be seeing the beginning of the end for the centralized tech behemoths.

  20. This is why I am opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Either private parties can discriminate on any basis they wish to discriminate on or they cannot discriminate against any person who is not engaging in some form of illegal conduct.

    “Anti-discrimination” laws actually PROMOTE discrimination by creating “protected classes” of persons. A NYC bar recently refused service to a White man because he was wearing a MAGA hat. He has no legal recourse because his political views do not place him in a “protected class” of persons.

    Had he been a Black man who was wearing the MAGA hat he MIGHT have a case if he could successfully maintain that his race was a motivating factor in his treatment. Were he wearing a “Gay Pride” cap his case would be much stronger, as “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are protect classes in NYC.

    “Protected Classes” of citizens violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and are based on an ideology which is foreign to our Anglo-Saxon based concepts of justice.

    • Irrelevant in this case. The fact that YouTube claims DMCA protections means they have no legal right to exclude legal content.

    • That is just Title II of the ’64 Civil Rights Act. It applied to ‘public accommodations” by which they meant private businesses. Lots of us are well aware of it and philosophically opposed to it.

  22. Alphabet, who owns Google and YouTube should not be considered a private business.

    It is a publicly-traded corporation and is owned by the public at-large. I, through my pension and mutual fund investments, more than likely own some Alphabet stock. I don’t get to vote my shares so, even though I am one of the owners, I don’t have a say in how the company is operated.

    All publicly-traded coroprations should be required by law to provide their services to any and all legal persons or companies without censorship or promoting a political position.

  23. Hmmm…didn’t even know Brownell’s had a channel. I spend a lot of leisure time watching YouTube on my “smart” TV. Yeah blah blah fight the power. Most of the channels are patreon or something now. I don’t know what can be done EXCEPT involve Trump or sic Ted Cruz on them…

    • Yeah we’ll use trump as a mop. Hold him upside down , wet his wig , & mop the floor with him. Their floor that is ! What’s trump doing to secure our 2nd Amendment rights these days ? Tweeting about it , I have to question what side he truthfully falls on. Its us vs them. Them being all those that would take our God given , constitutional rights from us without a single thought in doing so.

  24. I have quite a bit of issues with what Youtube is doing and I do see what they are doing as something that should be stopped and curtailed. Two main points come to my mind:

    1) Youtube is a monopoly and in our current society it forms the basis of what town squares used to be used for in the past. To get a message out to people, using Youtube is pretty much your only choice.

    2) Content creators do not work for Youtube and to me the appropriate analogy instead of just saying they are a private company and can do whatever they want is more like a renter/landlord relationship. A landlord cannot tell you that you have no right to speak your beliefs or that you can’t vote and so on.

    I see it as reasonable that Youtube is perfectly able to say that we don’t want a business relationship with this creator so we won’t do a Youtube partnership but basically kicking people out of the community I see as a huge problem.

    If a landlord owned over 90% of all the properties in the town and said that people can’t speak about such and such things and if they do then they are barred from all the streets of their properties and such it wouldn’t even stand a simple sniff test. I see this problem as very similar and I believe it needs to be addressed.

    What we have effectively done by not incorporating the bill of rights and important values of American life into the workplace has basically said we will tolerate and accept dictatorships when they come in the form of a corporation. Corporations are too big and wield far too much power and this is a new fight that we need to win.

    I’m a huge support of private property rights (I personally detest HOAs and think they are unAmerican) and to me the right compromise is the line of liability. In a sole proprietor and partnership, the people running the companies are personally responsible for things that happen and go wrong. Plus they are also personally responsible for finances. These business are basically the people behind them and I see them using their private property rights to choose how and with whom they do business as perfectly fair.

    However, the owners (or shareholders) of corporations and other liability limiting legal entities are now a separate legal entity from the people running them. I see this limitation of liability as also a moral hazard that has let corporations that have accumulated immense amounts of wealth, influence, and power do some of the most horrific and terrible things. Plus, with the way things are going I could easily see a future where these corporations rack up a body count higher than what governments have done to their own people over the last century.

    This is something that must be stopped and I see it as time to make these limited liability companies that operate inside of America have limits on them and using the constitution seems like a good place to start. Especially, when they are as big as YouTube as they begin to function just like a state actor.

  25. I believe YouTube needs to stop all their bull shit in regard to who can show / share / describe / educate / teach others etc. I don’t like being told by YouTube ” which I pay a monthly fee to use ” to decide what I am allowed to learn & from whom ! The shit just keeps getting deeper. Brownells for f… Sake ? Makes no sense to me.

  26. Hmm, according to Brownells’ Google+ page, they themselves deleted their Youtube account last night. So a nice manufactured conspiracy theory. And the outcome is to move to Facebook?

    • I don’t see that. I go to the “brownellsinc” page on YT and I get “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” so that’s quite the opposite.

      I’m not sure why it’s been suspended, though. YT tells me on the same page that related channels include SNL and the Tonight Show. There must be some mistake. Poe?

    • Yeah… because so many people actually use Google+ that it’s definitely not a fake page. /sarc

  27. “Brownells just announced the move on their Facebook page and had this to say on Twitter (while both of those social media channels remain open to them”…for the time being. And then theres that whole selling data thing showing who looked at Bownells FB page. I never gave 2 s#its about YT and I recently closed my FB account. Brownells can host their own videos thru their friendly neighborhood ISP.

  28. Rich white socialist progressive liberals simply don’t want the ordinary citizen to be exposed to firearms.

    They are also hypocrites. You can watch for free many old western or gangster films with plenty of gun play, in You Tube. But teaching people about gun facts, how to maintain, how to shoot, where to get guns legally, no you are not allowed to know that information.

    The rich will still have machine gun videos to watch. But the one thing a regular person can afford, the bump stock, those videos are banned on You Tube. Many have been taken down. Some are still up, for now.

  29. If the gun community wants to fight back against You Tube and the fascist leftwits that run it, the solution is simple: upload!

    Cloward & Piven is a leftist idea that suggests burdening “conservative” societal institutions until they break down from the collective weight of the stress caused by the people misusing them.

    We can do the same thing to You Tube. Upload ten minute long videos of a camera pointed at a tree, some rocks, or some other fixed object. Call it “art” and fill up their servers, costing them money to store useless video no one will ever watch.

    Force You Tube to further censor non-political content so they can stay afloat financially and then call them out for “determining what is good content and what is garbage”.

  31. Glad I ripped all of Brownell’s videos from Youtube with a nifty little program I downloaded. Along with any other useful channel on there. Saved them all to a few usb drives.

    • You don’t defeat an enemy by giving ground. YT is violating DMCA. They need to be held to account for that.

      • 1. By hosting on YouTube, Brownell’s is making money for YouTube. In what world do you defeat an enemy by sending him money?

        2. I’m not a lawyer. What part of the DMCA is YouTube violating? Sounds iffy to me.

  33. Google/Youtube’s leftist agenda is slowly crawling out of the woodwork. Brownell’s will not be the end of it, this is just the tip of the iceberg and it goes much deeper, financially. I watched this video and six minutes into it: Google’s name was mentioned, surprisingly. I skipped to the important part, but the whole video is informative.

    https://youtu.be/UQcCIzjz9_s?t=5m42s

    This is a bad thing. For the last 20 years I assumed google was a legitimate company and um, I’m starting to think otherwise because with the republicans in office, they’re finally showing their true colors.

  34. Pwrserge has a good general point with his DMCA remarks.

    Aside from that, people should keep in mind that modern corporations are arguably quasi-governmental entities. They are not the same thing as your local bakery or whatever from the 1800s. They are rather elaborate legal constructs in which the company is granted artificial personhood separate from the managers and shareholders, which grants the latter all sorts of protections.

    • Like I keep saying, large publicly-traded corporations should be prohibited from censorship or discrimination of any type.

      Sole proprietors and closely-held corporations should retain the right to choose with whom they wish to do business.

  35. Google is starting a new service to compete with Amazon prime (“Google Express”).

    When Google starts to sell stuff, actions that hurt the competition are, pure and simple, an antitrust violation.

    I think that its high time we broke up monopolies.

  36. Frustrating, but not unexpected. Many channels are getting closed by YouTube, as predicted.

    MidwayUSA will likely receive the same treatment. I already made a complete backup of the videos, for when they’re all removed.

  39. Let’s all remember that Google was created by the CIA…

    How the CIA made Google
    Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet—
    https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e

    Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of these mega-social-media companies were created to enable the construction of the sort of mass social monitoring – and social control – that the US intelligence agencies are not allowed to do legally.

    Excusing this sort of corporate censorship because they are “private businesses” is simply incorrect. They are not private businesses on a par with a baker. They are giant corporations whose actions influence millions of people and society at large.

    As a “right-wing anarchist” I oppose the notion of government telling private business what to do. But I also oppose “corporations” that are allowed to have “rights” the same as people and in some cases more rights than ordinary people. This is the source of the corporate influence on the government due to corporations having the “right” to support political candidates, which is the source of government corruption.

    Yes, you can start another platform which caters to those Google has decided to destroy. The Internet is built on that sort of capability and there’s plenty of software available that will enable you. But you’re not going to get the same exposure that you get on a mega-platform. And that means you aren’t going to influence society in any significant way.

    This is why all the hysteria over “Russia influencing the election” is so much BS. The Russian media outlets have almost zero penetration in the US media market. The alleged Russian “influence operations” like the Internet Research Company had almost zero influence on anything. Even the Washington Post had to acknowledge that when they reported that Russia Today barely gets 30,000 views a day – which, compared to the US national media, is less than nothing. Media outlets like Al-Jazeera have only 2% media penetration – which means not that 2% of Americans view them, but that only 2% of Americans even have access to them.

    So create your own platforms if you can. In fact, I would suggest that the firearms industry and the NRA pull a few million dollars out of their budgets and create a firearms Youtube. But Google and Youtube and Twitter will continue to force anything they don’t like off their platforms and into “Bantustans” with no influence on the social discussion of firearms.

    • Thanks for the link; the problem is so pervasive, it makes the expression “Deep State” a grand understatement.

  40. Perhaps this action can spawn a separate 2nd Amendment/gun themed video hosting site similar to YouTube. I think it would be very popular.

  41. d.tube > YouTube

    With d.tube, content producers are treated equally. The platform doesn’t get to decide that your 1000 likes are worth less than someone else’s 1000 likes. Your content is yours, meaning ads won’t be played before, in, or after your videos. And most importantly, d.tube is decentralized, meaning no single authority can remove your content in a weak attempt to virtue signal.

  43. It’s not that we need to separate gun channel like Full 30
    We need a channel that has all kinds of content
    I go on YouTube with my daughter to watch funny cat videos and how to make “slime”
    Then I might look at some stuff on ancient history, and outer space, and then guns.
    It seems to me that there is an opening for a truly content neutral competitor to YouTube

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