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Comment by Boris on September 29, 2018 at 12:05pm

A YouTuber who racked up hundreds of thousands of views pushing extreme conspiracy theories like QAnon, Pizzagate, and Flat Eartherism was arrested last week for allegedly threatening to massacre YouTube employees.

William Douglas, 35, was charged with cyberstalking and making threats after he was cuffed last Thursday by the FBI. The feds traced a series of death threats he made via social media back to his rural Oregon home, according to a criminal complaint. The threats came from a series of social media profiles where he ranted about fringe-right conspiracy theories and claimed YouTube was censoring him. In a still-live tweet from August, Douglas promoted a video promoting Nasim Aghdam, a YouTuber who opened fire on the company’s headquarters in April over the belief that her videos weren’t getting enough views.

In hundreds of videos, totalling hundreds of thousands of views, Douglas ranted about the New World Order, reptilians, government mind control, and Flat Earth theory. Recent videos also focused on right-wing conspiracies including QAnon, a ridiculous theory that falsely claims President Donald Trump is not actually under investigation, but that he is in fact investigating virtually every prominent Democrat and Hollywood figure for Satanic child sex-trafficking.

He even named his WiFi network after a related conspiracy theory.

The blog Contemptor previously noted that shortly into one of his QAnon videos, a message popped onto Douglas’s screen: “Connected to Wi-Fi network #investigatepizzagate”. That suggests Douglas named his home Wi-Fi network after the conspiracy theory that falsely claims Clinton allies are conducting child sex trafficking in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant.

But despite racking up more than 400,000 views on his videos in fewer than two years, Douglas claimed YouTube was censoring him.

“YouTube Is Censoring This Video Sound Analysis,” claims one of his video titles, about a Chicago murder that has become central to bizarre conspiracies about organ theft. The clip has more than 27,000 views. “I AM LIVE PLEASE COME WATCH IM CENSORED AS FUQ,” claims another recent livestream title. The video is still available on his YouTube page.

Right-wing personalities have rallied around fears of “censorship” by social media companies as Silicon Valley wrestles with how to moderate abuse and misinformation on their platforms. Some of those fears are unfounded. Recent studies have revealed that conservatives actually have a larger Facebook platform than liberals, and that the company shows no political bias against conservatives.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-fan-arrested-for-threatening-ma...