The #1 Trending Video On YouTube Is One Accusing Parkland Student David Hogg Of Being A Crisis Actor'

​As a group of students from Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have launched a gun reform campaign after the deadly shooting, fake news sources have targeted them accusations that the students are paid "crisis actors" seeking to push gun control reform. 

In particular, student David Hogg has found himself as the focus of these smears, thanks in part to the fact that his father is a former FBI agent and in part to an old clip where Hogg appears in a news report in California after he filmed a beach confrontation that went viral. 

So it makes sense that YouTuber mike m, a conspiracy theorist whose channel page shows his interest in Hogg and in other conspiracy theories like chemtrails, uploaded that news clip with the caption "DAVID HOGG THE ACTOR."

What doesn't make sense is how the video reached #1 on YouTube's trending algorithm — and why it remained there for so long [Update, 11:30 AM: the video has been removed]:

While the video itself still shows it as the #1 trending video and is still racking up thousands of views, the trending list itself appears to have updated and the video has disappeared entirely from the list. However, the current #1 on the list, a video from Screen Junkies, shows up as #2 on trending when you view the video, suggesting YouTube manually removed the Hogg video:

If you're wondering about Facebook, well, Facebook is still a mess: here are just a few of the many posts accusing Hogg and others of being actors have amassed hundreds of thousands of shares:

Update, 1:30 pm: In a statement to Splinter, Google said that the video was allowed to appear on trending because its system recognized the "authoritative" news source in the video and that the company removed the video when they became aware of it.