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YouTube Bans Videos That Promote, Link to Websites Selling Guns, Accessories

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March 21, 2018

Youtube this week clamped down on videos that involve weapons, banning those that promote or link to websites selling firearms and accessories.

The world's largest video site will also prohibit videos with instructions on how to assemble firearms, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

"We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. "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."

Some gun enthusiasts have already seen their pages suspended, although Youtube does not plan on fully enforcing the changes until April.

Spike's Tactical, a firearms company, and InRange TV, a channel devoted to firearms, both wrote on Facebook that they have been suspended from YouTube.

Last month, after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, gun-control activists put pressure on tech companies for giving the National Rifle Association a platform to express its views.

YouTube, along with other streaming services like Apple and Amazon, chose not to remove the NRA channel.

Published under: Guns , YouTube