It-which-must-not-be-named: COVID-19 misinformation, tactics to profit from it and to evade content moderation on YouTube

COVID-19 misinformation became accessible and profitable through socialmedia platforms, such as YouTube. Here we investigate if Brazilian YouTubechannels previously identified as vaccine misinformation spreaders would alsomisinform their audience about COVID-19. Our analysis sample consists of6 months of content (3,318 videos) from 50 Brazilian YouTube channels.We establish a protocol to classify the types of COVID-19 misinformationspread by the content creators, describing how the channels evade contentmoderation—disguising, replicating, and dispersing misinformation—and whattactics the content creators use to profit. Our analysis shows that thesechannels exploited COVID-19 misinformation to promote themselves,profiting in the process.