|
This article requires pre-publication review by an uninvolved reviewer (one not substantially involved in writing the article). Note, only qualified reviewers may do this and publish articles. This right requires experience with Wikinews policies and procedures. To request the right, apply here.Reviewers, please use Easy Peer Review per these instructions.
-Article last amended: Aug 19 at 20:42:30 UTC (history)Please check the talk page history before reviewing. |
| This article requires pre-publication review by an uninvolved reviewer (one not substantially involved in writing the article).
Note, only qualified reviewers may do this and publish articles. This right requires experience with Wikinews policies and procedures. To request the right, apply here.Reviewers, please use Easy Peer Review per these instructions.
-Article last amended: Aug 19 at 20:42:30 UTC (history)Please check the talk page history before reviewing. |
Friday, August 20, 2021
On Tuesday, a one-week long suspension of US Senator Rand Paul’s YouTube account ended. The platform removed two of Rand’s videos, one on August 3, and another on August 10, then restricted his upload rights citing its policy against COVID-19 misinformation. Rand labeled the decision as “anti-free speech” and promoted his Rumble channel.
“We removed content from Senator Paul’s channel for including claims that masks are ineffective in preventing the contraction or transmission of Covid-19, in accordance with our Covid-19 medical misinformation policies,” explained a YouTube spokesperson to NBC, adding “This resulted in a first strike on the channel, which means it can’t upload content for a week, per our longstanding three strikes policy”.
In the first video, which was an interview shot by Newsmax, Rand quoted Anthony Fauci’s private comments from the start of the pandemic as “most of the masks you can get over the counter don’t work, because the virus particles are too small and go right through them” and added “That’s still true. They don’t work.” On August 3, after YouTube removed the video, Rand issued a press release denouncing the decision as “censorship”.
In the second video, Rand repeated the above claims and added “saying cloth masks work, when they don’t actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID, while only wearing a cloth mask.” He referred to a 2020 Danish and a 2015 Vietnamese research paper to support his claims.
After YouTube removed his second video and restricted his account from uploading, Rand issued another press release on last Tuesday, saying “this kind of censorship is very dangerous, incredibly anti-free speech, and truly anti-progress of science, which involves skepticism and argumentation to arrive at the truth […] private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, so in this case I’ll just channel that frustration into ensuring the public knows YouTube is acting as an arm of government and censoring their users for contradicting the government”.
Per YouTube policy, the banned account could not upload any videos, live stream, or make community posts, among other things, for one week. Another violation within the same 90-day period will result in a two week suspension, and a third one in a permanent ban.