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YouTube expands restrictions on videos featuring firearms and firearm accessories

YouTube expands restrictions on videos featuring firearms and firearm accessories

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

YouTube has updated its policy on content featuring firearms, expanding the list of accessories that cannot be featured in videos that sell them or instruct users how to manufacture or install the accessories, reports Motherboard.

Under the new restrictions, accessories that cannot be featured in videos that intend “to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales” or “links to sites that sell these items” include those that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire or convert a firearm to automatic fire (including bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, and conversion kits), and high-capacity magazines. Videos can also no longer provide instructions on converting firearms to automatic or simulated automatic firing, manufacturing firearms, ammunition, silencers, and the aforementioned accessories. Lastly, videos cannot show users how to install these accessories.

YouTube already had a ban on videos that link to the sale of firearms and bump stocks. It last updated its policy on firearms in October 2017, when it banned tutorials on adding bump stocks to firearms following the Las Vegas massacre.

As Motherboard points out, there are creators who have already felt the results of these new guidelines. YouTube has suspended the channel for Florida-based gun manufacturer Spike’s Tactical, stating that “YouTube doesn’t allow content that encourages or promotes violent or dangerous acts that have an inherent risk of serious physical harm or death.”