r/canadaguns • u/Batsinvic888 Bats888 on YouTube • 4d ago

News / Politics / Activism YouTube has kneecapped and borderline ended firearms creators

YouTube just announced a new "branded content policy".

This policy prohibits all 3rd-party ads or products given to creators that are firearm- or ammunition-related. Think of TFB TV's product segments for example. The punishment for not disclosing it and uploading anyway is to have the video removed. It is also a crime to not disclose these things in most modern countries (Canada included).

If this is retroactive, we are about to see a truly insane number of channels get deleted and waves of age-restricted videos. If it isn't, we're going to slowly see the dying of the firearms community on YouTube. Like all creators who make their primary living from this, the majority of revenue comes from 3rd parties, not Google Ads. You can still earn Google Ad revenue without 3rd party ads, however, that is a tiny amount compared to 3rd party products of payments. I recommend looking at Linus Tech Tips' breakdown of revenue; it's informative. Firearms content is especially expensive to make.

The only content that will be left will be hobbyist content if this is fully enforced. By that, I mean content like mine where 90% of it comes from my own pockets, and it's part of a hobby I already do. Being a firearms creator as a career will now be borderline impossible. Those who already have a big following can go to other platforms and be okay.

I will still make videos, but I will be impacted by this both in the videos I can make and in any hope of this being more than a hobby.

201 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

View all comments

25

u/Bucky_Goldstein 4d ago

youtube is already rediculous, ads before you're even 2 min into the video now, so much AI crap, so much just outright garbage on the platform

23

u/julienjj 4d ago

adblockers on firefox do wonders for youtube ! I have not seen ads in years.

2

u/KorporalKarnage 4d ago

Brave browser.

1

u/Bucky_Goldstein 4d ago

thanks for reminding me, I was gonna install Firefox the other day then forgot, I'm tired of google disabling Ublock origin and other ad blockers

5

u/julienjj 4d ago

Yeah basically google (that owns the chrome project) is doing everything to make certain users are fed all the ads possible with the manifest v3 update. Chrome has turned into another junk google product sadly.