TheQuartering [5/17/2023]
Steven Crowder has given conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a means to subvert YouTube’s nearly five year ban on promoting his website — despite knowing that it is a violation of the site’s policies.
Crowder is a conservative political commentator and the host of Louder with Crowder, a program he regularly uses to make racist remarks and launch attacks against the LGBTQ community. Crowder’s show streams on YouTube, where he has repeatedly broken the site’s rules against hate speech with blatant racism and homophobia.
While Crowder’s channel has been suspended previously, it has never suffered permanent consequences for violating YouTube’s rules. In March 2021, he was temporarily suspended for violations of the platform’s 2020 election misinformation policies, but flouted consequences by streaming on an alternate channel. Two months later, Crowder received a second strike after he and his co-host ridiculed police shooting victim Ma’Khia Bryant. Crowder was again suspended in October 2021 for hate speech during an episode featuring Jones.
YouTube originally banned the channels of Jones and his Infowars network in 2018 after the conspiracy theorist attempted to circumvent previous suspensions — for videos in which he equated drag queens with Satanism and claimed Muslims “conquered” Europe — by streaming on an alternate channel. Before his ban, Jones used the site to push conspiracy theories encouraging harassment toward individuals including the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre.
While Jones’ content remains banned on YouTube, Crowder has repeatedly and directly encouraged his audience to access Jones’ work, despite knowing it’s a direct violation of YouTube’s policies.
YouTube’s external links policy tells users not to “post links in your content on YouTube if they direct users to content that violates our Community Guidelines.” The policy forbids sharing these links in any fashion, such as displaying or “verbally directing viewers to a website to find a profile or page on another platform so they can watch content that violates YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
Jones remains banned on YouTube since attempting to subvert a suspension by streaming on another channel, but has continually sidestepped these restrictions on his content by creating copycat Infowars channels to broadcast his conspiracy theories. Jones’ guest appearances with figures like Crowder, Logan Paul, and Joe Rogan on their YouTube channels additionally offer him an opportunity to continue spreading misinformation and hate to new audiences.
