• by Karlene Lukovitz , February 1, 2022

Following YouTube’s permanent removal of right-wing media commentator and Fox News host Dan Bongino due to his repeated violations of the platform’s COVID misinformation policy, YouTube parent Google has stopped serving ads on Bongino’s website.

The ad ban was confirmed by Google on Friday in response to press inquiries.

“We have strict publisher policies in place that explicitly prohibit misleading and harmful content around the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrably false claims about our elections,” Google said in a statement. “When publishers persistently breach our policies, we stop serving Google ads on their sites. Publishers can always appeal a decision once they have addressed any violating content.”

YouTube suspended the account of Bongino’s news aggregation program for seven days last month after he posted a video claiming that masks are “useless” in stopping the spread of COVID. After he tried to upload the video to another YouTube account during the suspension, YouTube permanently banned any accounts tied to his name.

Bongino, whose main YouTube account had attracted nearly 900,000 subscribers since being launched in 2013, appears to have intentionally provoked action by YouTube/Google.

Prior to YouTube’s first suspension, he hosted a podcast titled “I’m Daring YouTube to Do This.”

Following that initial suspension, “The Bongino Report” tweeted: “Hilarious watching the @YouTube communists desperately try to save face after we told them to go f%^* themselves. They’re claiming we ‘tried to evade suspension.’ Really? By posting a final video LITERALLY titled ‘Why I’m Leaving YouTube’?”

After the revoking of his Google AdSense account, his show’s Twitter account tweeted at Google Ads: “We deeply appreciate your efforts to try & silence us, it presents the perfect foil for the free speech parallel economy."

It is not clear how much revenue Bongino will lose as a result of the Google Ads and YouTube bans.

However, as Engadget noted, Claire Atkin, co-founder of the digital disinformation-fighting nonprofit Check My Ads, tweeted that Gateway Pundit lost $1.1 million in annual revenue after its Google AdSense account revoked for spreading COVID and election misinformation.

Bongino's Twitter account remains active, and he has tweeted his intention to keep posting videos on the right-wing Rumble platform, where he claims to have double the number of followers he had on YouTube.

Bongino hosts Fox News' "Unfiltered with Dan Bongino," aired on Saturdays.