YouTube bans Dan Bongino permanently

Conservative radio host and personality Dan Bongino has been kicked off YouTube for good.

“We terminated Dan Bongino’s channels for circumventing our Terms of Service by posting a video while there was an active strike and suspension associated with the account,” said a YouTube spokesperson in a statement provided to Mashable. “When a channel receives a strike, it is against our Terms of Service to post content or use another channel to circumvent the suspension. If a channel is terminated, the uploader is unable to use, own or create any other YouTube channels.”

Basically, Bongino tried to evade a temporary suspension by posting content when he was prohibited from doing so, resulting in a permanent ban.

As of Wednesday, both of Dan Bongino’s YouTube channels had been permanently deleted, one of which has almost 900,000 subscribers.

Earlier this month, Bongino violated the video platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policies when he posted a video claiming “masks were useless,” according to YouTube. The violation resulted in a strike for Bongino’s channel. Upon receiving one strike, YouTube suspends the user from posting on the platform for one week.

When a user accumulates two strikes, they receive a two-week suspension. If three strikes are accumulated, YouTube permanently terminates the channel. However, strikes expire after a 90-day period, allowing for some leeway for repeat offenders. 

If Bongino just waited out the week suspension for his first strike, he would have been able to post content on YouTube unabated once again.

But, during the week he was suspended, on Jan. 20, Bongino uploaded content to a secondary channel he ran, Dan Bongino Show Clips. YouTube explicitly prohibits “ban evasion” in its terms of service.

“If your channel has been restricted due to a strike, you must not use another channel to circumvent these restrictions,” reads YouTube’s terms. “Violation of this prohibition is a material breach of this Agreement and Google reserves the right to terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service.”

However, at the time, YouTube simply hit Bongino’s secondary channel with its own strike for the ban evasion and for also violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies, too.

Again, instead of waiting out the week-long suspension, this time due to a violation on his secondary channel, Bongino went back to his main channel and uploaded content. 

These repeated violations resulted in the permanent ban from YouTube.

Bongino is a powerhouse in the online conservative media-sphere, so he has other platforms where he can go. His Facebook page is often among the top-performing on the social network each day. 

However, Bongino’s most likely YouTube replacement will be Rumble, a video platform that became extremely popular among conservatives over the last year. Bongino boasts over 2 million subscribers on Rumble for his daily program, The Dan Bongino Show.

Bongino’s ban from YouTube will likely create a firestorm amongst his conservative audience, who have been searching for alternative platforms since Donald Trump was banned from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube last year after the events of Jan. 6. This will drive an even bigger audience to Bongino’s Rumble channel.

And, driving his audience to Rumble won’t only help pump Bongino’s subscriber numbers. Bongino is an investor in Rumble too.