I've been following Youtube's monetization changes and other policy changes that they've been considering or actively doing for months now and all I can determine is that Youtube is committing suicide and it seems to be speeding up as it approaches the cliff.
De-monetizing accounts (removing ads and thus, revenue from views) is being done to more than just gun channels or gun related content, it's being done to any channel or video that's being flagged as inappropriate for some reason or another.
I can't help but think back to this new-ish Youtube idea called "Youtube Heroes." It's this stupid idea that would make ordinary people unpaid moderators for Youtube in giving them the ability to mass flag videos. So, theoretically, all these college graduate snowflakes that have no jobs and rings in their nipples can join the youtube Hero program and flag videos that they are offended by.
Could be because of guns, could be because the video only featured a straight, White Christian male. Whatever the case, it's giving people powers they shouldn't have without consequence.
So it could be that, but I think all this is related to advertisers freaking out that the neo-nazi and ISIS related videos are being directly endorsed by Pepsi, Chevy, Apple, etc. It's another overreaction that's lacking in common sense, but we live in a world today where people are increasingly becoming stupider and they can start movements on social media to communicate with other stupids that if you drink Pepsi, you support the Holocaust and the Sandy Hook massacre.
I hope that this gets fixed soon, but a part of me thinks that the long term solution is that youtube will stop monetizing accounts altogether and the big channels, like Hickok45 and IraqVeteran8888 are going to need to need to be sponsors to be financially compensated for their work.
The suck part of that is small guys like ZRUS, ShootingTheBull410, FortuneCookie45LC, etc. will never find sponsors to help fund them and they're some of the most in depth channels related to shooting on youtube.