Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was suspended from YouTube for a week for spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
YouTube said it removed a video showing Johnson lambasting the Biden administration’s response to coronavirus while touting Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin as possible treatments of COVID-19. Neither drug has been authorized to treat the virus.
“We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Hill.
The policy does not allow content that “contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19,” to be shared on the platform.
Johnson blasted the decision by YouTube to suspend him, casting it as censorship by “big tech.”
“YouTube’s ongoing Covid censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power. Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives. They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies,” he said in a statement.
“How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas? Government-sanctioned censorship of ideas and speech should concern us all,” he added.
