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I wrote a bit more about this here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.scholarpedia.org/2013/11/0...

Putin would love nothing more than to see Americans lose faith in the democratic process, and he wins every time we mention "voter fraud" when we should instead be talking about election integrity.

It should be blindingly obvious that silencers/suppressors have a use beyond "hearing safety". Namely, that they allow someone to shoot someone else without attracting as much attention.

Are you claiming otherwise?

Or do the ethics have to do with YouTube's utility like status?

I personally am happy that YouTube can and does censor/ban porn, obscene videos, and videos depicting humans dying.

What do you specifically mean by "proven to make a difference"? Suppressors are known for being used by intelligence services -- presumably they're not using them to protect their agents' hearing.

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.

Freedom of speech and political expression is very different from your right to not be discriminated against for expressing your political views. I will defend your right to say "poor people should not be able to get healthcare", but having this political opinion provides important information on your character, which seems very legitimate to consider when making, e.g., a hiring decision.

There aren't easy answers here, and laws and policy are blunt instruments that will usually have some unintended and undesirable consequences.

The point is that given the availability of effective ear protection, there is no legitimate argument for civilian use of suppressors. There is no plausible argument that their existence would decrease the risk of a gun's being used illegally, and there are great reasons to believe that in some instances it would increase this risk, and/or make it more difficult to catch those who have done so.

Long range flamethrowers are illegal, but could be said to have a "legitimate use" for clearing brush. When there is no good argument for a thing to exist, and there are good safety-based arguments for it to not exist, then in the name of safety we should not have said thing.

Under what circumstances would you want to see companies revise their policies?

EDIT: missed a word

Flame throwers have a legitimate use as a brush clearing tool. Fortunately there are straightforward and safer alternatives.

The best way to prevent hearing damage from a gun is with ear protection.

If a gun's loudness sometimes acts as a deterrent, then the availability of this "piece of metal" will reduce/eliminate this deterrent, and consequently increase the probability of the weapon's being used.

The same can't be said for ear protection.

How so? This is not about blocking political speech from these platforms. It's about a specific issue: whether YouTube should make it easy for people to find instructional videos on how to make and modify firearms.

Would you be upset if platforms blocked content showing how to make bombs? Biological weapons? Why not include the blocking of firearm modification videos?

In any case, there isn't yet a gun-rights-maximalist party against which YouTube could be prohibited from discriminating.

Should YouTube be forced to host porn and snuff videos? Why or why not?

In answer to your question: the porn thing was a dicey question of tradeoffs, and in the US was adjudicated by the legal system decades ago. This is an explicit example of a debate about where to draw lines (a debate that continues), and porn has (for the most part) been evaluated to be in-bounds as concerns ICANN and power companies. For now, at least.

If you fully ramify your position, you're advocating that the government tell me that if I host videos, I can't prevent people from posting videos that I don't like. E.g., if I make a cat video hosting platform, and someone uploads a dog video, I can't stop them.

Again, this is a debate about where to draw the line. It just happens to be the case that there are some people who are fierce advocates for maximizing the amount of gun stuff that is readily available online.

Actually, political opinion is not protected against discrimination. Otherwise I could create a political party that advocated, say, the extermination of a particular group, and then if you refused to hire me (because I'm obviously an asshat if I hold this view) I could sue you.

The tradeoff is between the relative costs and benefits of suppressors. Given that ear protection is cheap, plentiful, and doesn't increase the probability of someone getting shot, it's hard to justify the legality of suppressors for purely "safety" reasons.

This isn't a debate about censorship. This is a debate about where to draw the line on what is and isn't acceptable content.

How do you propose YouTube draw the line on what is and isn't acceptable? Because legal/illegal isn't going to work here.

But the reality is that censorship is not all, or even mostly, bad. YouTube censors snuff videos. And porn. Is that bad? How about videos showing how to make bombs? What about nuclear bombs? What about anthrax? What about biological weapons?

Clearly, YouTube and other platforms must and will draw lines on what does and doesn't constitute acceptable content.

The question isn't about censorship. It's about where the line should be drawn.

For whatever reason, there's a lot of people who think that instructional videos on guns should be in-bounds rather than out-of-bounds. To the extent people are talking about "censorship" writ-large it is a distraction from having to justify making specific kinds of content widely available.