YouTube has removed a video suggesting that David Hogg, one of the survivors of the shooting in a Parkland, Florida high school last week, is a crisis actor paid to give a false account of the incident. The video was removed only after it became the number one trending clip on the site on Wednesday morning.
The video consisted of footage Hogg’s appearance on KCBS, CBS‘s local L.A. affiliate. Hogg was interviewed about a video he recorded at Redondo Beach, showing an altercation between a lifeguard and his friend. Hogg’s video had gone viral, prompting local news to contact him.
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The conspiracy theorist who posted the video posited that it proved Hogg was an actor, because he was in L.A. six months before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. In point of fact, the Hogg family moved from California to Florida around that time. This is one of the many conspiracies being spread about the survivors of the shooting, who have channeled their grief into activism after 17 people were killed in their school.
The video was not only removed from the trending list but removed from YouTube altogether. In places where it was linked to previously, a message from the platform appears.
“This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on harassment and bullying,” it says.
A representative for YouTube offered a statement on the video to Variety.
“This video should never have appeared in Trending. Because the video contained footage from an authoritative news source, our system misclassified it. As soon as we became aware of the video, we removed it from Trending and from YouTube for violating our policies. We are working to improve our systems moving forward,” the rep said.
Many of the students, Hogg in particular, have been targeted by conspiracy theories. While many of them are circulating among fringe groups online, one prominent figure took an interest in Hogg’s story — Donald Trump Jr. The president’s son “liked” a tweet suggesting that Hogg was a crisis actor less than a week after he hid in a closet from a mass murder.
Hogg has called these theories and accusations disgusting as he continues to make appearances on the news in support of the March for Our Lives event.
“I’m not a crisis actor, I’m somebody that had to witness this, and live through this, and I continue to have to do that,” Hogg said in a Feb. 20 appearance on CNN. “The fact that Donald Trump Jr. ‘liked’ that post is disgusting to me, but it’s also false.”
“These people keep saying that I’m anti-Second Amendment,” he went on. “I’m not. I want every American to be able to own a gun that has a mentally stable mind, a person that has a credible background, that doesn’t have any previous, like, major convictions, and somebody that’s not going to go out and commit these atrocities. Because those are the people that are at fault here.”
On Tuesday, Florida lawmakers rejected the survivors’ plea for a ban on assault rifles.
