Infowars one strike away from YouTube ban

Conspiracy theory outlet Infowars is one strike away from being banned from YouTube.

The channel said it received an alert from YouTube on Tuesday morning, saying Infowars received a second strike on a video about the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting and will temporarily be unable to upload new content. 

{mosads}”This is the second strike applied to your account within three months. As a result, you’re unable to post new content to YouTube for two weeks,” the alert said. “If there are no further issues, the ability to upload will be automatically restored after this two week period.”

Infowars’s second strike comes as social media giants like YouTube and Twitter grapple with how to handle extremist or conspiracy theory content.

A channel that receives three strikes from YouTube within three months is banned from the platform. While Infowars has several other ways to promote its videos — including an online radio show, its own website, Twitter and Facebook — a ban would cut Infowars off from its YouTube subscribers, which number more than 2 million.

CNN reported last week that the channel, which is run by host and owner Alex Jones, had received its first strike for promoting a conspiracy theory about the Parkland shooting.

Infowars has referred to the strikes from YouTube as a “CNN lobbying campaign.” 

The first strike was related to a video targeting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, titled “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” and suggested Hogg and others were paid “crisis actors” instead of actual students who survived the shooting.

The video is no longer on YouTube. 

Jones made similar claims after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn.