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- YouTube has suspended Rudy Giuliani for two weeks, meaning he can’t upload new videos.
- YouTube said Giuliani broke its rules on election integrity and promoted nicotine.
- This is Giuliani’s second suspension in two months. One more and his channel could be removed permanently.
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Rudy Giuliani is in danger of losing his YouTube channel.
As first reported by Bloomberg, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer was suspended from the platform for two weeks after he posted a video in which he claimed the November 2020 election was stolen from former president Trump.
YouTube said Giuliani had also broken its rules on promoting nicotine, but did not give details on how exactly the former New York mayor had endorsed nicotine – and the offending video has now been removed.
“We removed content from the Rudy W. Giuliani channel for violating our sale of regulated goods policy, which prohibits content facilitating the use of nicotine, and our presidential election integrity policy.
“Additionally, in accordance with our long standing strikes system, we issued a strike against the Rudy W. Giuliani channel, which temporarily restricts uploading or live-streaming,” a YouTube spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Giuliani's channel, which has 557,000 subscribers, is still accessible, but he won't be able to upload new videos during the suspension.
This is the second time in two months Giuliani's channel has been sanctioned by YouTube. In January the platform suspended him from its ad partners program for sharing misinformation about the presidential election, and blocked him from uploading videos for one week.
YouTube has a three-strikes policy. If Giuliani gets a third strike in the next three months, YouTube's policy dictates his channel would be permanently removed.
Voting-machine maker Dominion is currently suing Giuliani for $1.3 billion over his assertions the election was stolen from Donald Trump.