YouTube temporarily suspended former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani from its partner program last week, the Alphabet Inc unit said on Tuesday, citing repeated violation of its policy that prevents false claim of widespread fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
The partner program gives content creators greater access to the video platform’s resources and enables revenue sharing from ads that are served on their content. The move removes the channel’s ability to monetize and restricts access to features like partner support, YouTube said.
YouTube also said on Tuesday that it would indefinitely block Trump’s YouTube channel from new uploads “in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence.” YouTube first banned him from posting new videos two weeks ago.
The suspension, which YouTube imposed last week and confirmed on Tuesday, came as Dominion Voting Systems sued Giuliani for $1.3 billion, alleging he used his social media posts to make damaging, false claims that the company had engaged in election manipulation.
For more than a year, Giuliani has used YouTube to push a variety of Trump-friendly positions, posting videos whose titles include “The Biden Crime Family’s Payoff Scheme” and “Election Theft of the Century.” Some of his videos also pushed false conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.
It’s unclear how much money Giuliani might have made from YouTube’s revenue sharing program. Some of the biggest YouTube stars make millions of dollars a year on the platform, but most have endorsement deals and solicit donations directly from fans in addition to taking a cut of ads. Giuliani also made money from hawking dietary supplements and online fraud prevention services directly to his audience in the middle of his videos. [Italics mine] Giuliani’s social media influencer business extends to Facebook and Instagram, where he often posts endorsements and product discount codes.
