The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washinton D.C. released a photo Friday of a suspect being sought 'for questioning' in Wednesday night’s arson at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Northwest D.C.

(See previous Voat post here.)

The man is described as 25 to 30 years old with blond hair and a beard. At the time of the fire, he was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white varsity-style jacket.

The fire broke out after 9 p.m. Wednesday. NBC Washington reported that it had spread to some curtains and window coverings before employees extinguished it. There were no injuries.

Incidentally, (cough) YouTube announced on Friday that it will recommend 'fewer conspiracy theory' videos.

The Guardian explicitly mentions Pizzagate in its article about the move:*

YouTube will recommend fewer videos that “could misinform users in harmful ways”, the company announced on Friday, in a shift for a platform that has faced criticism for amplifying conspiracy theories and extremism.

The change concerns YouTube’s recommendations feature, which automatically creates a playlist of videos for users to watch next. The recommendations are the result of complex and opaque algorithms designed to capture a user’s interest, but they have become a locus of criticism when YouTube directs people to potentially harmful and false content that they would not have otherwise sought out.

The company did not provide a clear definition of what it considers to be harmful misinformation, but said that some examples were “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the Earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11”.

In 2016, the conspiracy theory that became known as “Pizzagate” – a popular rightwing fake news story alleging that the Comet Ping Pong restaurant was linked to a child sex ring involving the Hillary Clinton campaign – motivated a gunman to fire a weapon inside the restaurant.

On Thursday, The Guardian had already published an article called 'Trapped in a hoax: survivors of conspiracy theories speak out'.

Incidentally, cough, James Alefantis was among the five people portrayed:

James Alefantis Falsely accused of running a paedophile ring

In October 2016, a month before Trump was elected, James Alefantis hosted a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Comet Ping Pong, his Washington DC pizza restaurant.

Within days, his establishment was under siege and he found himself at the center of the mother of all modern conspiracy theories: Pizzagate. Hillary Clinton, so the narrative went, was masterminding a global child-trafficking ring that was holding kids as sex slaves in his basement.

The rumor-mongering began when private emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, were stolen allegedly by Russian agents and released through WikiLeaks. In them, Podesta mentioned his brother Tony’s friend and their occasional cooking companion, Alefantis, as well as a fundraising dinner they were planning together at Comet Ping Pong.

Soon, photos of Alefantis’ godchildren were being lifted from his Instagram page and repackaged to support claims of hideous pedophilia. Conspiracy theorists were arguing that “James Alefantis” was a bastardization of “j’aime les enfant” (I like children) and that cheese pizza, “cp” for short, was a code for child pornography.

The heinous notion that Alefantis was a pedophile working with Hillary Clinton to abuse children in the basement of his restaurant (Comet Ping Pong has no basement) hurtled around the internet. Abusive messages were posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page and in Yelp reviews; one online critic claimed to have found a child’s hand in his pizza. Crisis actors, deep state, false flag: the rise of conspiracy theory code words

But it was not until bigger beasts got involved that it became truly dangerous. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, retired army general Michael Flynn, fanned the flames by tweeting about Clinton’s “sex crimes w children”. Then up popped Alex Jones once more, telling his thousands of Infowars listeners that “something’s going on, something’s being covered up”, exhorting his devotees to “go investigate it for yourself”.

So they did. The self-appointed “investigators” stepped out of the computer screen and began turning up at Comet Ping Pong.

“There was this break into the physical world that began to happen,” Alefantis recalls. “People came into the restaurant to film or look around. They came by my house, asking neighbors questions. Suddenly you look around and you don’t know who to trust.”

In December 2016, Edgar Welch answered Jones’s call to investigate the satanic child sex ring. He drove 350 miles from North Carolina and burst into Comet Ping Pong armed with three guns. He went table to table, terrifying customers and staff, then shot into a locked closet before giving himself up to police. Six months later, he was sentenced to four years and is still behind bars in Elkton federal prison in Lisbon, Ohio.

Alefantis finds it impossible to talk about that day without tearing up. For a full year after the gunman’s appearance, armed guards were posted at both doors of the restaurant, which remains equipped with multiple security cameras and panic buttons

Alex Jones eventually apologized for promoting Pizzagate, and in August was barred from YouTube, Apple and Facebook and other leading social media platforms. Last week the streaming device Roku joined the ban having granted Jones and Infowars access to its content for less than one day. But for Alefantis this is too little too late. The damage has gone too deep.

His extraordinary, petrifying ride has taught him a lot about the modern world. At one point, against the advice of friends, he reached out to some of his assailants and asked them why they hated him so much.

“I communicated with them. I realized that they also live in fear. That there’s a sense of abandonment and powerlessness where young people online believe the government is conspiring against them or stealing their children which is outrageous but real for them. We have a lot of learning to do about who is disenfranchised in this country.”

Through it all he has held on to positive thoughts, encouraged by the support of the community of pizza lovers that rallied around in his darkest hour. “It feels at times that things are out of control, that hate is on the rise. But I now understand the power of community. It saved this place. There’s no reason it can’t save the rest of the country, or the world.”

So we have this timeline:

Wednesday: Allegedly, some curtains are set on fire by an unknown man in Comet Ping Pong.

Thursday: The Guardian publishes an article portraying James Alefantis, CPP's owner, as victim of the 'Pizzagate conspiracy theory'.

Friday: YouTube announces it will recommend less videos spreading 'conspiracy theories'.

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