YouTube has suspended a popular news channel One America News Network for sharing covid-19 misinformation, the BBC reports. OANN, a favorite of US President Donald Trump will not be able to make any money from its channel for the next one week while the suspension lasts. Also, OANN will not be allowed to put up any video while the suspension lasts.
“Since early in this pandemic, we’ve worked to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation associated with Covid-19,” a statement from the company explained per the BBC. “After careful review, we removed a video from OANN and issued a strike on the channel for violating our Covid-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content that claims there’s a guaranteed cure.”
TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and a couple of other social media companies have been going tough on violators of policies lately. Just last month, Patreon joined the growing list when it announced a ban on QAnon theories on its platform. The company announced that it would be taking action against any account that actively uses its platform to spread QAnon theories.
“QAnon-dedicated creators that are identified by our Policy and Trust & Safety teams will have their accounts removed from Patreon,” the company said in a blog post per Bloomberg. Patreon however, adds that accounts that analyzed the QAnon conspiracy would not be affected by the ban. Creators that have spread some QAnon ideas but “are not dedicated to spreading QAnon content” would also be given the time to bring their accounts in compliance with the company’s new policy.
QAnon, which sometimes is referred to as “the Storm,” is popularly known for its connection to Pizzagate, which is a baseless conspiracy that accused Hillary Clinton of running a sex trafficking ring out of a Washington D.C pizza place. The conspiracy, according to TechCrunch, “inspired an armed believer to show up to the pizza shop, where he fired a rifle inside the restaurant, though no one was injured.”
Back in July, Twitter vowed that its platform would no longer welcome right-wing conspiracy theories also known as QAnon. The microblogging company said it would begin treating QAnon content on its platform differently. Twitter said it would remove related topics from its trending pages and algorithm recommendations. It went further to add that it would rid its platform of all associated URLs, and permanently suspend any accounts tweeting about QAnon that had previously been suspended.
The company said it would permanently suspend such accounts as part of measures to keep its platform safe for all “We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension— something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.”
