Fox News host Dan Bongino has been permanently banned from YouTube, the platform confirmed, after he supposedly attempted to evade his ban by posting on a second channel.
Mr Bongino was originally suspended earlier in January for a video in which he claimed that masks do not help prevent the spread of Covid-19; in reality, N95 masks and even cloth masks provide some limited protection against exposure from Covid-19 in enclosed spaces, findings which have been verified by public health authorities including the CDC. In a clip posted to his secondary YouTube channel earlier this month, he referred to masks as “useless” for preventing the spread of the virus.
In a statement to news outlets on Wednesday, the video site’s administrators appeared to confirm that Mr Bongino had uploaded a video from his main channel while the second channel which hosted clips from his radio program was under a one-week suspension that began on 20 January. The video in question appeared to be an announcement from Mr Bongino that he was leaving the platform entirely for Rumble, a conservative-friendly platform that recently partnered with former President Donald Trump’s proposed social media platform Truth Social.
His previous suspension had also resulted in Mr Bongino’s ouster from YouTube’s partner program, which allows users to monetise their videos with advertisements.
“When a channel receives a strike, it is against our Terms of Service to post content or use another channel to circumvent the suspension,” a spokesperson for the company said on Wednesday.
“We terminated Dan Bongino’s channels for circumventing our Terms of Service by posting a video while there was an active strike and suspension associated with the account," they continued.
The Independent has reached out to Fox News for comment. Mr Bongino himself appeared to respond through a tweet from an account for the Bongino Report, which is now hosted on Rumble. A second tweet from the account quipped “good riddance” to YouTube.
Conservative media personalities frequently battle with content moderation policies on social media platforms over the issue of misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.
As recently as November a correspondent for the right-wing broadcaster Newsmax, Emerald Robinson, was permanently banned from Twitter for insisting several times that the Covid-19 vaccine was linked to Satan.
