InfoWars one step closer to YouTube ban after Florida conspiracy theory video
InfoWars is reportedly one step closer to being banned from YouTube after posting a video promoting a conspiracy theory about the Florida high school shooting.
The channel, run by famed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, received one strike from YouTube for posting that video, CNN reported Friday.
If a channel receives three strikes from YouTube within three months, it gets banned from YouTube.
{mosads} “Last summer we updated the application of our harassment policy to include hoax videos that target the victims of these tragedies,” a YouTube spokesperson told CNN. “Any video flagged to us that violates this policy is reviewed and then removed.”
The video in question claimed that survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., were actors. It singled out student David Hogg, who has spoken out publicly after the shooting.
The video was titled “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” but is no longer viewable on YouTube. It depicted Hogg and other students as “crisis actors” — a term used by conspiracy theorists who believe that mass shootings like Parkland are staged events to drum up support for gun control.
InfoWars owner Alex Jones made similar claims in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Conn.
Hogg criticized those spreading conspiracy theories in an interview on CNN.
“The fact that these people refuse to believe something like this could happen is something that all of us don’t want to believe, but that said truth is that it is,” he said. “These people saying this is absolutely disturbing.”
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