Wednesday, August 11, 2021

The YouTube account of US Senator Rand Paul was suspended on Wednesday, with YouTube citing the companies policy against COVID-19 misinformation. In a statement by YouTube the company spokesperson said, “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,” 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 video that resulted in the week long ban Senator Paul made claims that cloth masks were ineffective in combating the spread of the Coronavirus. This ban comes after a long string of attacks by Senator Paul against public health officials and government agencies including sending an official criminal referral to the United States Department of Justice against Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress and attacking the CDC guidance on mask-wearing, saying that it is “anti-science”.

In a response to his channel’s ban on YouTube Senator Paul said, “I think 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,” continuing, “As a libertarian leaning Senator, I think 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,”.

In accordance with YouTube policy Senator Paul’s account will be unable to upload any videos, live stream, or make community posts, among other things, for one week. If another violation is made within the same 90-day period as the first strike it will be a two week suspension, and a 3rd strike within the 90-day period will result in a permanent ban from YouTube.

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