Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene suspended from social media for COVID disinfo

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Two lawmakers have received temporary account suspensions from YouTube and Twitter over their repeated posting of COVID-19 disinformation, yet videos from both espousing similar disinformation remain on Facebook.

On Tuesday, YouTube removed a video posted by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in which he falsely claimed that masks were not effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Also yesterday, Twitter suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for one week after she falsely claimed that neither vaccines nor masks reduce the transmission of COVID. Both masks and vaccines do work, in fact, and there's ample evidence that wearing masks slows the spread of the disease.

Paul and Greene are suspended from YouTube and Twitter, respectively, for one week. Paul's suspension was handed down because YouTube had to remove another one of his videos last week. As this is his second offense, his account will be unable to publish for seven days. Greene is now on her fourth strike on Twitter, meaning that another violation could result in her being banned from the platform permanently.

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