Well, this is worrisome:

YouTube Bans Firearms Demo Videos, Entering the Gun Control Debate

“We routinely make updates and adjustments to our enforcement guidelines across all of our policies,” a YouTube spokeswoman 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.”

YouTube is a private company, so their repeated decisions to shut down speech from those on the right or conservative or libertarian viewpoints is, I guess, legally fine… it just seems like a bad idea both for the culture as a whole and for YouTubes business model. The article above points out that one gun channel has already relocated to PornHub of all places. As more and more conservatives find themselves cut off on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and such, right-wing alternatives to those platforms will necessarily establish themselves. And while that will be a necessity for those on the non-left side of the political spectrum, it will be bad for society as a whole. We’re already pretty badly separated; having those on the right using completely different communications systems from those on the left… that won’t exactly promote unity, will it.

Additionally: by expelling the perfectly normal non-leftist content, decisions like this will not only separate the sides, this decision will help move the sides to their fringes. Take a hypothetical science fiction author for an example: let’s say he stood a chance of getting published by a major publisher. But then the major publisher decides that the authors middle of the road moderate libertarian, or conservative Christian, or rock-ribbed Republican worldview is unacceptable. The author gets blackballed from the major publishers. And it turns out that the only publishers willing to publish the author might happen to be *actual* far-right publishers. It then comes down to a decision between being unpublished, or being published alongside crazy fringe stuff. The author might take the latter course out of financial need. So now a moderate author is promoting and helping to fund far-right extremism, because the author had no other choice in the matter. Not because the far right held a gun to the authors head, but because the far *left* did.

So now the author is writing for a far right publisher, for readers who increasingly skew far right. It is now in the authors financial interest to skew his or her future works ever further right.

So by trying to silence moderate conservatives, communication companies that are run by lefties create a burgeoning right wing communications industry, as well as a mountain of anger and resentment.

The future’s looking spectacular.

That’s sarcasm, by the way.

“Free speech” alternatives include:

Vid.me: an alternative to YouTube whoopsie, it shut down in December.

BitChute: alternative to youTube

Gab.ai: alternative to Twitter, apparently quite the hangout for trolls and such

Minds.com: alternative to FaceBook, with a Patreon-like function.

Hatreon.com: A Patreon alternative that started off with the likes of actual-Nazi Richard Spenser

Wesearchr: an alternative to Kickstarter

I’ve not used any of these. I have from time to time contemplated actually making some use of the YouTube channel I have (which, to be honest, I don’t even remember where it is…) by posting videos that each describe some project or other from US Aerospace Projects. Whenever I think of this idea, I think the way to do it is entertainingly and with humor. And every time I think of it, I notice yet another news report about how YouTube is sticking it to the small timers, demonetizing any videos that deal with weapons (which, of course, most of the projects I’d cover would be classified as) or whatever the last skullduggery is, and my enthusiasm for the idea fades.

Oddly, over the past couple of weeks I’ve given a series of interviews on the Orion project for a documentary, where  my recordings will reportedly be used to do some voice overs due to me being – apparently – entertaining on the topic. Shrug.