Social-Media
YouTube suspends One America News for one week after it spreads a bogus COVID-19 remedy
YouTube briefly suspended the right-wing channel One America News Network (OANN) for spreading a fake COVID-19 remedy. The OANN channel will remain live, but will be stopped from posting new videos for a week and will be excluded from YouTube's advertisement partner network.
Axios announced the news today, and Ivy Choi, YouTube spokesperson, clarified it to The Verge. After careful review, we removed a video from OANN and hit the channel for violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy, which prohibits content that claims to have a guaranteed cure, Choi says. In addition, as a result of repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy and other channel monetization policies, we have suspended the YouTube Partner Program channel and as a result, its monetization on YouTube.
OANN has regularly checked YouTube's policies, most recently in the background of the US presidential election. YouTube took a more hands-off approach to political propaganda than Facebook and Twitter, making a video where OANN wrongly reported that President Donald Trump had won the election. It justified its agenda by stressing that it supports authoritative news organizations, a term that YouTube claims does not include OANN. After its COVID-19 video, OANN will have to re-apply for the partner scheme if it wishes to monetize videos, which will earn one strike under YouTube's three-stroke termination policy.
