Edgelords at risk of falling off: Daily Wire hosts confirm YouTube strikes, suspensions
After stripping advertiser revenue from Matt Walsh’s YouTube channel, the platform suspended Candace Owens and Michael Knowles for violating the terms of service
Written by Ari Drennen
Published
In what is becoming a regular series of disclosures, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing took to Twitter Sunday night to report that podcast hosts Candace Owens and Michael Knowles had both been suspended for receiving second strikes against their accounts on Friday and that Jordan Peterson had been given his first. Three strikes against a YouTube account in a 90-day period leads to its termination.
Matt Walsh’s YouTube account was stripped of advertiser revenue in April for hateful conduct against trans Bud Light model Dylan Mulvaney. Walsh said in a speech denouncing Media Matters that the move had cost him more than $100,000 per month, and he complained that “it doesn’t seem that other channels are being held to this standard right now.”
That seems to be changing: Boreing alleged that “in the last 90 days, our accounts have received 104 violations for ‘Hateful and Derogatory’ content, earning them ‘limited monetization,’” He added that “nearly every one of these violations comes from our coverage of the trans debate.”
The Daily Wire once again credited Media Matters for YouTube’s decision to enforce its existing terms of service, with vice president of public relations Alyssa Cordova sharing an article from March that enumerated the anti-trans hate published across Daily Wire YouTube channels.
In a Twitter thread posted Wednesday, Knowles claimed that he had received a weeklong suspension from YouTube for violations including implying that trans people are “mentally inferior” and referring to Mulvaney using he/him pronouns.
Recent weeks of Candace Owens have featured the personality urging viewers to avoid shopping at Target “or else you’re gay and you’re a pervert,” claiming that “transgenderism” is “a cancer and we should fight it,” and bragging that she could “beat up” a nonbinary Navy service member.
Knowles has argued that banning books and drag queens is “very American,” called to ban the Pride flag and other LGBTQ symbols, and breathlessly warned viewers that “hypnosis pornography” might turn them trans. This dark and dehumanizing rhetoric fits with a larger vision of state violence against marginalized communities.
In his thread about the suspensions, Boreing called out investment firms Blackrock and Vanguard, joining a larger conservative effort to cancel companies with pro-LGBTQ policies. Peterson called the two companies “sworn enemies” and promised retribution that would make Target and Bud Light “sideshows by comparison.”
Despite the action on YouTube, the DailyWire+ app remains available on the Google Play Store, which says that it disallows “apps that promote violence, or incite hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.”
The DailyWire+ app is also available on the Apple App Store, which claims to ban “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary” about sexual orientation and gender, particularly if the app or content “is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.” Apple removed Infowars, the podcast hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, from the platform in September of 2018, spurring other tech companies to do the same, and severely limiting the reach of Jones’ harmful rhetoric.