YouTube censored and demonetized a song criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci. The platform claimed that the song violated its policy on medical misinformation.
The song, called “Sad Little Man” by Five Times August, accuses Fauci of lying. It references experiments performed on beagles that the Fauci-led National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was accused of funding.
The song also says people worship Dr. Fauci, accepting everything he says.
The video of the song contains animated images of Fauci in a crown, clown shoes, and at some point with devil’s horns.
Speaking to The Federalist, the writer of the song and member of the Five Times August band Brad Skistimas said that the video was temporarily removed. The removal came after it started going viral following a mention by radio host Glenn Beck.
“Just as the video was reaching peak traffic I started receiving user comments about how difficult the video was to find and that it was not appearing in search results. … It wasn’t until I called YouTube out publicly on Twitter did the original upload magically appear back in search results but Google/YouTube never explained or gave reason to any of this and who knows how many views and potential subscribers I lost due to this,” he explained.
YouTube reinstated the video but the song cannot be fully monetized because it contains “medical information.”
“I won’t be making much, if any, off of monetization through ads, which is a substantial source for content creators on the platform,” Skistimas said. “The first several days the video was accepted with full monetization, then after a manual review they marked it for limited ads due to ‘medical misinformation’ – which if you watch the video – can see there’s no way to clearly define what that misinformation is.”
Skistimas said that YouTube has ignored his emails demanding an explanation on how the song violates its policies.
