Thread by @AlKapDC

New from me: Months after YouTube announced a crackdown on QAnon, the platform is still hosting multiple channels airing shows supporting the conspiracy theory, some of which run ads. That includes multiple ban evasion channels for banned QAnon figures. mediamatters.org/google/despite…

There are still some major QAnon influencers YouTube hasn't targeted despite banning other QAnon influencers, such as a channel run by a group of QAnon influencers who were banned from Twitter following the Capitol insurrection, & channels from individual members of that group.

And among the QAnon ban evasion channels, some are run directly by people behind the banned channels. Take Edge of Wonder, whose co-host began uploading the show to his own channel after the show was banned. YouTube is also running an ad for the show even though they banned it.

There have also been numerous foreign-language channels on the platform that have transitioned from posting nonpolitical content to sharing QAnon shows, getting tens of thousands of views combined. And some of those channels are verified by YouTube, & some uploads have ads.

There was I think a feeling among many that YouTube's October QAnon crackdown essentially removed the conspiracy theory & major figures promoting it from the platform. That hasn't quite been the case.

(Without saying if this is actually the case, the sense I got from researching & writing this piece is that after YouTube did its crackdown in October, the platform kind of called it a day with QAnon & didn't see what happened with QAnon on the platform afterwards.)