YouTube said the video shown above did not violate its standards. Photograph: YouTube
YouTube is promoting conspiracy theory videos claiming that the Las Vegas
mass shooting was a hoax, outraging survivors and victims’ families, in the latest case of tech companies spreading offensive propaganda.
Trump visits Las Vegas after attack: 'It’s a very, very sad day for me, personally'
It appears YouTube is actively helping these videos reach wide audiences. Searching for “Las Vegas shooting videos” immediately leads to a wide range of viral videos suggesting that law enforcement and others have purposefully deceived the public. Some label the tragedy a “false flag”, a
term conspiracy theorists typically use to refer to mass shootings they say are staged by the government to advance gun control.
“When I see my wife fighting for her life with a gunshot wound to her chest, and my daughter was also shot, it’s pretty conclusive evidence that it did happen,” said Melanson, whose wife, two daughters and two friends
escaped alive from the Route 91 Harvest festival Sunday night. “My daughter texted me … ‘There is a shooting right in front of us’ and another text said, ‘Mom is shot.’”
One video on the first page of results on the Google-owned video platform Wednesday morning was called Las Vegas ‘Shooting’ ... Did It Actually Happen? and questioned whether the attack was “fake” and if victims were “actors”. It had more than 250,000 views after one day on the site.
YouTube told the Guardian that this footage and other specific conspiracy videos that appeared after a generic search did not violate its standards.
Conspiracy theories about mass shootings are nothing new in America, but some fear YouTube’s popularity and algorithms are exacerbating the problem. In addition to automatically suggesting Las Vegas conspiracy footage to people with
basic search requests, YouTube has promoted a wide variety of fake related content to people who watch a single propaganda video.
That means for some, YouTube is not suggesting reputable media sources and instead is exposing them to dozens of videos painting a picture of a massive conspiracy.