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youtube paul pelosi

Andrea Austria / Media Matters

YouTube is making money from false conspiracy theories about the Paul Pelosi attack

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 10/31/22 3:38 PM EDT

YouTube is making money from false conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

On October 28, a man broke into the California home of Paul and Nancy Pelosi and assaulted Paul Pelosi with a hammer. The attacker reportedly shouted “Where is Nancy?” during the attack, and the alleged attacker had shared multiple far-right conspiracy theories online. There is no evidence that the alleged attacker and Paul Pelosi knew each other before the attack.

Yet, a Media Matters review using the tracking tool BuzzSumo found that YouTube is running ads on — and thus monetizing — multiple videos pushing and giving credence to baseless conspiracy theories, including claims that have spread online that the alleged attacker and Paul Pelosi had a lover’s quarrel and that the attack was a false flag. Some of the videos pushed a tweet from new Twitter owner Elon Musk that spread the false lover’s quarrel conspiracy theory.

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YouTube has created an enormous monetization crisis on its platform by repeatedly allowing channels to monetize videos that violate the platform’s own rules, along with allowing ads to run on videos pushing misinformation in general.

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