We all (hopefully) know Hickok45, the undisputed king of the YouTube gun video who for nearly two decades has been regaling the internet by shooting nearly every single gun imaginable:
Hickok45, aka retired schoolteacher Greg Kinman, has enjoyed many years of YouTubery and has doubtlessly made quite a bit of money on his highly-viewed videos, in no small part because he attracts high-value gun company sponsors.
But this week he informed us that YouTube is bringing an end to that particular money stream:
Some of you may have seen that YouTube changed their policy on gun videos in June 18th and we were not aware how much that was going to affect us until very recently when we just talked with our Google rep ... And you may notice that our videos posted since June 18th have been removed.
And the reason for that is because essentially the new policy ... is that all sponsorships from companies that are either firearms companies or companies that deal in firearms accessories are a complete violation of YouTube's policies and any videos posted with sponsorships of that kind post-June 18th will make your channel subject to being completely terminated, strikes and termination...
And any video before that is subject to the video itself being terminated. So prior to June 18th the video itself is at risk. Post-June 18th the entire channel is at risk. And as you know we have had sponsorships like that almost the entire time we have been doing this. So, it pertains to probably 95% of our content.
So we are at the risk of losing everything and having to almost start from scratch.
Indeed, YouTube's gun policy seems to confirm this new rule:
Don't post content on YouTube if the purpose is to do one or more of the following:
Sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g. private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items. ...
Basically if you tell your creators that they can't "link to sites that sell firearms," you've knocked out nearly all possible gun company sponsorships.
It's a garbage policy from a company that should know better. This will take out a huge chunk of excellent, useful YouTube content. In all likelihood this will end up very poorly for YouTube, which may lose hundreds or thousands of creators.
Hickok45, meanwhile, is not losing hope:
I'm still hoping for that big movie roll in Hollywood. I don't want to quit doing videos. I'll get that call one day.
We hope you do, Greg, and we hope YouTube comes to its senses in the meantime!
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
