I’m going to say right up front – this shit is lame as fuck.
Yes, they can make their own policies, but they should be expected to acknowledge their own policies and also follow them. They should not be allowed to pretend there’s a violation when there’s not a violation.
Removing content without providing a reason is bad – how are folks supposed to learn if they’re not provided the information to improve? It’s like slapping a 7 year old because they did something wrong but not explaining what they did wrong. It’s abusive.
What happened? I posted the Attila “table top” video, the exact same video as posted here:
Maybe a month or so after I posted it to Youtube, I got a warning that the content was a policy violation. The notice didn’t say what was violated.
Watch the video. Now read the YouTube firearms policy. Show me where there’s a violation.
The appeal process is a straight-up joke – they don’t allow you to ask questions, and in this case, the appeal was denied immediately, almost as if it were automated. You also are only allowed one appeal – they ignore all subsequent appeal attempts.
The warning notice states to read their firearms policy, which I did. I then rewatched the video. I didn’t see a violation.
They do not tell you the exact violation but insist that a policy was violated. They also state that you can take a quick training course to remove the warning – why do this is there was no violation? I will not take that training. They also state that if you get another warning within 90 days of the first warning, you get a channel strike. It’s like they’re trying to force you to take the training, which is a joke if you’ve not violated a policy.
Youtube also provides timestamp of the violation (but don’t share details on what policy was violated). In my case, it highlighted a portion of the video where I pulled the firearm out of it’s pistol case (the gun was shipped in that case). This portion of the video, timestamp 3:45, is what was flagged.
They give you the opportunity to remove the timestamped area that they highlight and also give you the opportunity to resubmit. In this case, I removed what they thought was a violation and the resubmittal was denied – they said what was removed was insufficient. WTH. They pointed to the timestamp, I removed, that portion, and they then changed up and said what I removed wasn’t enough.
Everything I tried was rejected but no details were given.
I suspect that their AI didn’t like the fact that the gun had a tag. That tag isn’t legible (I obfuscated the text before I posted the video). I didn’t mention any websites within the video and there are no web links attached to the video. The video is age-limited. I was not selling any guns – that’s clearly apparent in the video. How does a fucking illegible tag that is attached to a gun equate to me selling a gun?
I went to X.com and asked TeamYouTube for a manual review (I did this on 6/7/2026). They replied and said they’d look into it and asked that I follow them so that they could DM me for additional details (which they never did), and then they promptly forgot the request. I reached out to them publicly on 6/19, asking them for a status. They tried to make it seem as if I missed a DM, and I replied, saying that I didn’t miss anything – they never reached out to me between 6/7 and 6/19. They sent me a DM 20 minutes later stating that, “Unfortunately, the video violates our firearms policy” and referred me to the policy. I informed them that I read that policy on 6/7 and it didn’t suffice, as I’m unsure of what portion of the policy was violated. I also told them that I still do not understand what portion of the policy was violated. They pretty much ghosted me after their DM.
I think they use DM so that folks can’t see how badly they’re handling these. I also think that they may be purposely being obtuse so that they can quickly remove and/or shut down channels. Some of this may be AI, but even the humans are being super shady when folks reach out to them for support. There’s a LOT of folks that have been adversely impacted by YouTube staff members being insensitive and purposely unhelpful.
Also, I’ve said this before – Rumble IS NOT A SOLUTION to the issue of YouTube being tyrannical. A small majority of internet users are using Rumble, small enough to not really be a good tool to advocate for firearms usage and education. Most of my Rumble videos have very little hits. Most of the more popular guntubers have very little visitors to their Rumble channels when compared to their YouTube channels. It’s quite clear that Google/YouTube has an unfair monopoly as far as social media is concerned.
At one point, the government was pushing for more transparency from YouTube – what happened with that? Nothing at all.
My problem is with one video removal. My worry is that if YouTube isn’t being forced to be transparent and forthcoming with “policy violations”, they can do this with every single video I own, and my channel is small – I’m making no revenue from YouTube. There are folks that depend upon YouTube revenue (that are not even providing firearms content) that have had their revenue pulled because YouTube insists they’re violating a policy that whey won’t share in detail. That is bad.
What’s crazy is that there’s videos on YouTube of folks showing their camel toes and such and that’s OK to share as content, but this particular video isn’t allowed because it contains a firearm being shared as educational/sporting content.