YouTube has apologized for a top tending shooting conspiracy video that suggested one of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivors who has been instrumental in the student-driven gun control advocacy movement was an actor.
"This video should never have appeared in Trending," a YouTube spokesperson told Fox News. "Because the video contained footage from an authoritative news source, our system misclassified it. As soon as we became aware of the video, we removed it from Trending and from YouTube for violating our policies. We are working to improve our systems moving forward."
The situation arose after Benjamin Kelly, an aide to Florida State Rep. Shawn Harrison, claimed that two students appearing on TV after 17 people were killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting were crisis actors.
Kelly referred to a conspiracy video on YouTube that appeared to include news clips of David Hogg being interviewed about a confrontation with a lifeguard that occurred in California, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
"There is a clip on you tube that shows Mr. Hogg out in California. (I guess he transferred?)," Kelly said to the Tampa Bay Times.
The video went viral and prompted many conspiracy theorists to speculate as to whether Hogg was a student or an actor.
The now-deleted controversial video that prompted YouTube to apologize was uploaded by a user named Mike M. and resurfaces content from the video Hogg filmed during the lifeguard confrontation, Fox News noted.
Hogg addressed the claims that he was a crises actor in an interview with CNN.
"I'm not a crisis actor," he said. "I'm somebody that had to witness this and live through this and I continue to have to do that."