 Everybody, we did it. I was actually going to take the day off from making a YouTube video, so I decided to just hop on real quick because this is such exciting news. So it's not scripted, you get to see my beautiful face for the entirety of this video, but we did it, and I just wanted to take a moment to just send out a massive thank you to everybody. For those of you who aren't caught up to speed on what's going on, I'm gonna make it very brief because I've made videos about this already that you can check out. But anyways, I made a video debunking a QAnon COVID conspiracy theorist who was telling people to not wear masks. And YouTube took my video down, my channel got a warning, which leads to a strike, and the actual warning said it was for impersonation. And I've just been so, like, the word is just frustrated. Like, you know when you feel like you're just screaming into a void and nobody's hearing you? Like, I don't know, this is one of the issues that I had growing up, I just felt like I was never heard. So when it happens again, I freak out. And it was just crazy because I reached out to YouTube so many times, so many times, and they kept saying, oh no, we reviewed this and we're upholding our position. They were saying that either, A, my video was me impersonating myself, or B, that it was going against the World Health Organization, even though my video was telling people to wear masks and I was debunking a video that was telling people not to wear masks. And, you know, thanks to everybody out there for, you know, getting this message out. Like, I was so frustrated and like, I was getting upset. I'm like, does nobody care about this issue? Like, this is a big deal. Like, personally, like, I feel that it is so important that we're able to have videos that debunk conspiracy theories about the pandemic, that we have videos that are able to discuss the dangers of not wearing masks in a pandemic. And I was afraid to make more videos about the subject in fear that YouTube was going to take them down, right? But thanks to a bunch of creators coming together and a bunch of, you know, all of you coming together. Like, we got YouTube's attention. So I just wanted to thank some creators out there. This isn't like an award speech or anything, but sorry if I forget anybody. But huge thanks. First and foremost, Shannon from Creepshow Art, like, she actually made a video dedicated to talking about this. It has over 100,000 views and we got a lot of support from that. So huge, huge thank you to Shannon. Last night, which might've been the tipping point was a big creator on this platform, Roberto Blake. He tweeted about this. He saw that some other creators were dealing with this, where YouTube was saying that they reviewed things and it didn't really look like they did. So he tweeted about it last night. But yeah, I forgot to mention, like, how did this happen? Like, I wanna make it clear. Like, YouTube didn't email me. They didn't reach out to me. They didn't let me know what happened. I just hopped on this morning. I went in to go reply to some comments. And I was like, huh, my YouTube studio looks a little different. And the warning was gone and I was like, okay. And I looked and the video was back up. So my original QAnon video was back up. And yeah, like, I don't know. Like I said, Roberto retweeted it yesterday, but we also got some more traction yesterday. But it started a couple of weeks ago. First, the channel, some ordinary gamers, he retweeted about it and then it just kind of caught fire, a Twitter account, comment, top if any of you follow him, he tweeted it out. Honest Team YouTube, they tweeted it out. And by the way, I'm gonna link all the creators, YouTube channels, like if you wanna go check them out, show them some love. But we also had big creators like Destiny, Atosie. Huge thanks to Donna from Psych IRL. She's retweeted about this a couple of times. And then other creators in the commentary community like Nicholas Diorio and John Swan and Tommy, he tweeted it out too. And like, I just really appreciate it, but huge thank you to all of you who saw this and you realized that it was messed up, it's wrong. And YouTube needs to have better conversations with us about what's going on and actually look into things instead of sending these copy and paste replies. So huge thank you to all of you who have left comments or tweeted about this or tweeted at YouTube or anything, all right? And the last thing I'll say, and I don't wanna be extra about this, I don't wanna be extra, but it's not over, all right? There's like that old saying, like you won the battle but you didn't win the war, like this isn't over. So just to let you know, the channel Thunderflit, I just checked out his channel. He has almost a million subscribers and he had this exact same thing happen. He was debunking COVID conspiracies. His video was taken down. It was flagged for impersonation, just like mine. I just checked, his video is not up, all right? So we're not done yet. I'm still gonna try to help him get the word out and see what's going on, but this works. So go follow him on Twitter and tweet out about this. And also like QAnon is going to continue making videos. And listen, I mentioned this in a video the other day. Like I know how nuanced and complicated the topic of free speech is. I don't think, I wouldn't necessarily say that QAnon channel should just be de-platform. I would never say that, but we need to ensure that this platform allows for people to debunk the misinformation that they're giving, all right? Because it seemed really sketchy that YouTube is supposed to be adhering to what the World Health Organization is saying and punishing creators for putting out the wrong information, and that is a tricky line. And I wouldn't wanna have to make those decisions at YouTube, but we need to make sure that YouTube lets creators like myself and ThunderFoot and anybody else who is going to debunk QAnon COVID conspiracies or anybody who's anti-mass, they need to allow our videos on the platform. Like I would argue that the algorithm should boost those videos up to get the right information out there. But anyways, they're going to still keep making videos, so we need to keep getting people to understand the truth about COVID, the pandemic, what's going on. My goal with this channel, thank you for all you loyal rewired soldiers who have been here for a while. Like you've noticed that I've kind of pivoted. I just believe that we all need to become better critical thinkers. We need to stop just reading headlines or hearing things. And I just made a video the other day about how our intuition can get us into trouble. You know what I mean? So like we need to work on looking at what people are saying. Like the reason I made that original video that was taken down was like, I've been seeing people saying that they're not going to get the COVID vaccine based on stuff that like people like QAnon is saying. And that is nuts to me. So we need to keep getting the right information out there and keep having these conversations. But what I talk about on this channel and critical thinking and skepticism and psychology and philosophy and all those things, like it spans out into all aspects of our lives and the decisions that we make on a daily basis to hopefully make our lives just a little bit better. But anyways, this video is way longer than I thought it was going to be. So again, thank you, thank you, all of the creators who helped me. I'm going to link their channels down below. Go check them out. Go subscribe, follow them on social media. And a huge thank you to all of you out there in the audience. A lot of you have been DMing me with video topics that you want me to cover and ideas and everything like that. Feel free to reach out to me on social media anytime. My inbox isn't like blowing up. So I'm pretty good at replying to people. So feel free to shoot me a DM. And yeah, I hope you all have an amazing rest of your day and I'll see you real soon with another video essay.