Rand Paul suspended one week by YouTube over COVID-19 mask claims | TheHill – The Hill

Sen. Rand PaulRandal (Rand) Howard PaulRepublicans are the 21st-century Know-Nothing Party CDC: Unvaccinated more than twice as likely to get COVID-19 reinfection Senate in talks to quickly pass infrastructure bill MORE (R-Ky.) has been suspended from YouTube for a week over a video claiming that masks are ineffective against COVID-19.

In a statement to The Hill, a YouTube spokesperson said theplatform "removed content from Senator Pauls 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."

"This resulted in a first strike on the channel, which means it cant upload content for a week, per our longstanding three strikes policy. We apply our policies consistently across the platform, regardless of speaker or political views, and we make exceptions for videos that have additional context such as countervailing views from local health authorities," the spokesperson added.

If there is another policy violation during the 90-day period, Paul's channel will receive a second strike, and he will not be able to upload for two weeks.

Paul said in a statementthatthis 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.

As a libertarian leaning Senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, so in this case Ill 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, Paul added.

The move comes a week afterYouTube removed a video ofPaul being interviewed by a Newsmax journalist on wearing masks during the pandemic.

YouTube said at the time that it removed the video for falsely claiming that masks were ineffective against COVID-19.

But the video that led to the suspension was Pauls response to theYouTube removing the earlier video, his office said.

In that second video, Paul claimed that two different studies showed that surgical masks and cloth masks didnt protect against the coronavirus.

Paul madehis response video available on Rumble.

Earlier this week, Twitter took similar action against Rep. Marjorie Taylor GreeneMarjorie Taylor GreeneGOP efforts to downplay danger of Capitol riot increase The Memo: What now for anti-Trump Republicans? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she's meeting with Trump 'soon' in Florida MORE (R-Ga.), suspending her for seven daysafter she tweetedthat vaccines are failing.

Updated at 10:15 a.m.

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Rand Paul suspended one week by YouTube over COVID-19 mask claims | TheHill - The Hill