YouTube exists to make money. It makes money through advertisers. If advertisers don't want to use YouTube then YouTube loses money.

Politics/agenda are certainly involved.

I can think of 11 banks off the top of my head, some are big banks, a couple credit unions, a brokerage with banking services like Schwab. If I googled for "local banks" I would get a lot more. What is the lack of competition you are referring to?

Would you fault Google for removing videos promoting unsafe driving practices that endanger lives, or promotional materials or sponsored videos or ads for cigarette brands, or videos demonstrating the means by which fentanyl can be mixed in with heroin? I'm not saying these are perfect analogies, but rather where do we expect massive companies to draw the line when it comes to distributing potentially harmful content?

Does SV/Google have the right answer to reduce gun deaths? I don't know, but do I fault them for trying something when deaths are occurring minute by minute? Certainly not, something must be done to curb the tragic number of deaths we are shrugging off.

There's no good reason to think that this step by Youtube will help with the "public health" side of the issue at all; it's fairly transparently about an animus against guns qua guns.

Problem: Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Solution: Videos about medical procedures? Get rid' of em!

and so on. Only allow cat videos.

yes, yes and yes.

I don't know what you mean by that. Please explain.

(EDIT: Legitimately don't understand the downvotes here.)

As for why it was downvoted I guess a number of people on both sides found it to be plain false and maybe also someone though it was a deliberate misrepresentation of the situation.

Second, it is a kind of ad hominem fallacy to claim that there exists some kind of unspecified (and no doubt nefarious) "liberal agenda" to which advocates subscribe. Especially given that 97% of the US supports universal background checks, how can the o.p. be so sure that this is the product of a "liberal agenda" and not instead a sensible response to an epidemic-level problem?

When people refuse to describe the entities they claim to exist (again: where and what is this "liberal agenda"?) there's good reason to be skeptical of both the people and the entities. Often it's scary packaging for something that's reasonable if you take the time to look at it.

You might have noticed already but in case anyone else didn't: yes, I partly agree with you on this (and I also to some degree think this behaviour is childish.)

> Second, it is a kind of ad hominem fallacy to claim that there exists some kind of unspecified (and no doubt nefarious) "liberal agenda" to which advocates subscribe.

It seems to me a majority of HN thinks Youtube is even more "liberal".

> Especially given that 97% of the US supports universal background checks, how can the o.p. be so sure that this is the product of a "liberal agenda" and not instead a sensible response to an epidemic-level problem?

Many of us (me included) would like more background checks etc.

The problem for me is that a number of people see background checks only as a first small step towards banning guns.

I think there is still room in USA for a European style collaboration between hunters, sports shooters and police.

That would be a win-win. But as long as everyone with a brain can see a ratchet I guess enthusiasm will be limited in the NRA/2A camp.

The big tech companies (in terms of direction from the top) are mostly center-right neoliberal in orientation, straddling the US partisan divide (Microsoft has historically been attached to the Republican Party, which paid off big when the Bush Administration took over from the Clinton Administration at the end of their antitrust trial, most of the rest of the big firms have been closer to the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.)