The top trending video on YouTube Wednesday morning advanced a burgeoning conspiracy theory that a survivor of last week’s shooting at a Florida high school was a “crisis actor.”
By 11 a.m., the video had been removed from YouTube — but could still be viewed on other sites.
Similar videos and links also flooded Facebook and Google on Wednesday, some garnering tens of thousands of shares.
Facebook and Google searches for “crisis actor” or the student’s name, “David Hogg,” return a mix of links: Some legitimate news sources citing Hogg’s denial of the claim, and some spreading the false report.
CNBC searched “David Hogg” in Google News just before noon Wednesday, and found false reports listed as “Related Coverage” alongside legitimate reports.
It shows that major tech companies are still unable to keep false news items off their platforms, despite the avalanche of criticism they’ve been hit with since the 2016 election.
Facebook and Google faced similar challenges in November when a gunman opened fire on the crowd at a Las Vegas concert and false reports appeared on the sites.
The companies at the time said they work to curtail the spread of misinformation.
Google and Facebook did not immediately return request for comment.
–CNBC’s James Thorne contributed to this report.
