YouTube Threatening TFBTV

Hey Everyone,

Sorry in advance for this long post:

First and foremost, let me thank you again for your support of TFBTV. I'm flying back from EnforceTac and IWA, and I can afford this trip due to your support, as well as 5.11 generously sponsoring our coverage of SHOT Show, EnforceTac, and IWA. And 5.11 asked almost nothing in return - just some coverage of their booths. Please think about them the next time you're looking for some range or hiking gear.

As many of you may have heard, YouTube has recently been scrutinizing gun content more than usual, but this recent trend is much more unsettling than YouTube's past censorship campaigns because it's simply unreasonable.

A number of popular channels have been banned for videos they published on YouTube months or years ago that were never an issue before; content that met published community guidelines. While it seems unfair to me that YouTube can re-tailor its firearms content guidelines as frequently as it does and remove revenue-producing content after the fact with virtually no recourse for the content creator, my opinion is that it's completely irrational to not only remove that content retroactively, but to also punish the content creator retroactively for content that was perfectly fine at the time it was uploaded.

According to creators that have been cancelled by YouTube, the apparent trigger for strikes and bans involves depictions of the simple installation or removal of silencers on firearms - just screwing them on. Contrary to popular belief, silencers are federally regulated, but absolutely legal to own in 42 states. Also note that many countries with much more restrictive gun laws don’t regulate silencers at all – they can just be bought over the counter without any paperwork whatsoever.

Even though creators have been banned over silencer videos, this content does not violate YouTube’s guidelines. Interestingly enough, YouTube's firearms policy (which can be found here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7667605?hl=en) only forbids videos containing:

"[I]nstructions on manufacturing [...] Homemade silencers/suppressors" and "how to install the above-mentioned accessories or modifications." (Emphasis added.)

To my knowledge, none of the creators who were banned or who received strikes used "homemade" suppressors, but completely legal, registered, and serialized suppressors. Thus, YouTube has been removing content and striking/de-platforming creators arbitrarily through unwritten, unspoken guidelines. While YouTube concludes its written firearms policy with the catch-all statement "Please note this is not a complete list", again, it seems unjust to retroactively remove content and take punitive action against creators who have not violated any past or present published guidelines provided by YouTube.

Out of an abundance of caution (i.e., fear), TFBTV has since removed over 50 of its own, revenue-generating, written-guideline-compliant silencer videos. If you're curious, that list of videos we removed to protect the channel is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ql9a46EKGvp3hl9AfSjRo-klhY2ZuN_wjXptwwoX6Ug/edit?usp=sharing

And apparently, we missed one. After 8 years without one video being removed or one content strike against TFBTV, earlier this year, we received the following terse message from YouTube on our Creator Studio Interface:
"Community Guidelines warning:
Your content Gemtech Lunar 9: Super Light $600 Silencer for 9mm, .300BLK, or .22LR was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines."

There was no further explanation as to how the video violated guidelines and we were provided no means of appealing the decision. For that matter, this video did not violate any guidelines whatsoever - it was filmed with a legally-owned silencer.

But, YouTube didn't stop there.

Only a few days later, we received the following email (emphasis in original):
"Hi TFB TV,
After our review, we have decided to apply enforcement action on this video [Note from James: Because they deleted the video, I don't know which video it was, so I don't get the point of hyperlinking it.] by TFB TV as it contains a promotion of and links to firearms giveaways, breaching YouTube's firearms policies. Given the channel's status, this video will be removed without a strike penalty.
In addition, we have been made aware of other videos - both by TFB TV and their partner channel, TFB TV Show Time - that are also violative of our policies, due to the links to direct firearms giveaways in their video descriptions.
We will not take any enforcement actions on these other videos for now, but please work to clean up such videos in your current channel, and all other partner channels they may have, in one week in order to avoid any further enforcement actions. Please review our Firearms policy and take the necessary actions to prevent further enforcements of this kind in the future."

Note that review of the firearms policy reveals no prohibition on the TFBTV gun giveaway - although there is a prohibition on "sell[ing] firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g. private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items." The giveaways are neither sales, nor person-to-person or private sales: They are operated by Top Gun Supply, a federally licensed dealer, who only sends the prizes to other federally licensed dealers, and those receiving dealers perform the required background checks on the winners, without exception. Moreover, we have been hosting and operating these giveaways for years through YouTube. Hundreds of videos have been manually reviewed by YouTube censors containing the links and the giveaways, but not until 2023 has it become an issue.

As we speak, I've scrubbed links to tfbtv.gun.team, SubscribeStar.com/tfbtv, and Utreon.com/c/tfbtv from hundreds of videos and descriptions as the giveaways are hosted there. Note that Patreon forbids gun giveaways on its platform, so we stopped operating them there over a year ago, but we are at least permitted to keep links to Patreon in the descriptions of our videos.

Why does this all matter?

We don't take money in exchange for reviews. We don't push bullshit products or cell phone games or piss-poor-quality optics and lights. We only partner with companies that we've known and trusted for years prior to any partnership (the only gun companies we have agreed to any sponsorship with have been two of our faves, Glock and Mossberg, and neither is sponsoring the channel at present). We can afford to do so because of the patronage we receive from you on SubscribeStar and Utreon, and now we can't advertise these platforms on YouTube.

As a result, 2023 is the first year where TFBTV has seen a decline in crowdfunding support (i.e., Substar and Utreon). Technically, the smartest thing would be to just discontinue the gun giveaways and resume advertising SubStar/Utreon, but we want to give something back to our supporters. Plus, I don't want to put my ankles behind my head for YouTube on principle. As long as we can maintain the support base we have now, we'll keep up the TGS giveaways.

Thank you for your continued support, and if you would encourage your friends to consider throwing TFBTV a buck or two a month to support us, we'd appreciate it, as we have only limited means to get the word out now.

Of course, that also means I can no longer announce gun giveaway winners on TFBTV Mailroom. As a side note, Mailroom has been moved after episode 50 to my personal channel, YouTube.com/JamesReeves for the exact reason that I was worried the Mailroom content could lead to a TFBTV strike. It’s a little…risky. For those of you who keep asking where the bizarrely cult-classic mailroom vids are, note that this is a separate channel and you'll need to subscribe and enable notifications to see those pop up in your feed.

Winners will now be announced every month via a post on SubscribeStar and Utreon. I'm behind on giveaways because of SHOT, IWA, and EnforceTac, so to announce our January winners:
Winners, $100 Blue Alpha Gift Certificates:

1. HerrHermann (Utreon)
2. beefyhen (SubStar)
3. 2BlackCats (SubStar)
4. Grimm Trenchmouth (SubStar)

Winners of a gun or $350 Gift Certificate from Top Gun Supply:

1. Mosinguy3 (Utreon)
2. The Tactical Hippy (Utreon)
3. chucktla (SubStar)
4. Kai Lindenblatt (SubStar)

Winner of a $250 Top Gun Supply Gift Certificate:

1. Chadb133 (Utreon)

I'll announce February winners in a couple of weeks, and March winners at the end of this month, and we'll be back on track and caught up on giveaways by April.

Full rules and details can be found at tfbtv.gun.team but the gist is that all supporters are automatically entered to win one of four $100 gift certs to Blue Alpha every month, and all members at the $5 level and higher are automatically entered to win one of four guns (or a $350 gift cert) from Top Gun Supply every month – you do nothing, just sign up for Utreon or SubStar at $5 or higher. One $25 supporter is randomly selected to win a $250 gift cert to TGS every month as well. So we're giving you not only the best (ok maybe not the best because it kinda sucks, but at least it's mostly unbiased) gun content on YT, but we're giving away over $2,000 of guns and gear to you every month for your support.

As a parting comment, we are asked "why do you deal with YouTube? You should join [this platform] instead." One, even though Alex and I founded this channel 8 years and 44 days ago, I'm an independent contractor for TFBtv, I don't own it, so it's not my choice. We are on BitChute and Gunstreamer already, and Utreon also hosts all of our videos. We're there already. But those entire libraries, combined, have fewer views than even one average TFBTV YouTube video. Giving up on YouTube would destroy our reach. The entire point of the "Guns, Not Politics" approach is not because we aren't politically active people, but because we use our apolitical platform as a strategy to reach viewers who might be turned off by politically-oriented content and to show them that guns don't have to be polarizing - they can be tools, investments, and a whole lot of fun - maybe that gets more people on the pro-gun side for us.

Thanks again for the support, please consider sharing this post or amplifying your own support, and stay tuned for TFBTV Mailroom #59.
You know I love you guys-
James