YouTube Search Results for A-List Celebrities Hijacked by Conspiracy Theorists
In which we find that once again right wing nutjobs know how to cram whatever they want to the top of Google’s search engines.
YouTube’s effort to contain misinformation and propaganda on its platform remains a work in progress, as videos from a far-right conspiracy group showed on Monday.
The videos, which contain baseless accusations of pedophilia against some A-list celebrities and at least one company, were among the top search results on YouTube for those names on Monday. Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and the Mexican cement company Cemex have been the subject of videos from believers of Qanon, a conspiracy theory that has gained traction on the far right and centers on baseless allegations that Democratic politicians and celebrities are part of a child sex ring.
When users searched for Tom Hanks on YouTube on Monday, the top five videos all accused Hanks of being a pedophile. NBC News was able to replicate the results both logged in and logged out of YouTube from several different IP addresses. Last week, believers of the Qanon conspiracy heavily pushed the baseless allegations on Twitter and Reddit before they reached YouTube.
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