YouTube confirmed to multiple news outlets on Wednesday that it had permanently suspended conservative media personality Dan Bongino from its platform, claiming he tried to evade a previous suspension.
The Google-owned video-sharing platform alleged that Bongino uploaded a video to his primary channel while his secondary channel, which uploads clips from his radio show, was under suspension for sharing a claim that masks are useless in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The claim reportedly violated YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy — despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recently updating its own guidance on the efficacy, or lack thereof, of cloth masks. The act of uploading a separate video on an associated account reportedly violated the platform’s Terms of Service.
“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 YouTube spokesperson told the Hill. The spokesperson added that both of Bongino’s channels had been removed and that any future attempts to make new channels “associated with his name” would be denied.
Earlier in the week, Bongino had already announced his plans to leave YouTube for good over the platform’s biased censorship of conservative voices.
In a video titled, “Why I’m Leaving YouTube,” Bongino allegedly announced all of his future content would be posted exclusively to Rumble, a pro-free speech competitor to YouTube that the media personality and Fox News host was an early investor in.
On his website, his team slammed the move, saying, “YouTube attempted a poorly executed ‘you can’t break up with me if I break up with you first’ approach, and decided to ban Dan from the platform he just left and was never going to post to again.”
Bongino had nearly 900,000 subscribers on his primary YouTube channel. But on Rumble, his primary account, “The Dan Bongino Show,” which posts full episodes of his weekday show, boasts more than 2 million subscribers.
The Hill reported that Rumble’s popularity skyrocketed in the first quarter of 2021, reaching over 30 million monthly viewers.
Earlier this month, after being handed a temporary suspension from YouTube, Bongino wrote an email to the platform, signing off by writing “Respectfully Kiss My A**.”