YouTube Finally Responds to the Logan Paul Controversy, Issues Reprimands

ByJayme Kennedy

More than a week after one of its biggest stars stuck his racist, disgusting foot all the way into his throat, YouTube has finally issued a statement about Logan Paul and the now-infamous suicide video. In a series of tweets, YouTube addressed the video and its continued silence on the matter. They also briefly touched on the policies that allowed content like that to be uploaded in the first place.

Logan Paul is a YouTuber who’s famous for being, for lack of a better description, a complete fucking dickbag. He’s crass, crude, rude, and god help us, tweens and teens idolize him.

Paul and his entourage of other idiots visited Japan, and in a video that sparked outrage around the world, filmed a dead body they found in Aokigahara. Known as “suicide forest”, Aokigahara has become known as one of the world’s most prevalent suicide sites; hundreds and hundreds of people have gone into the forest to take their own lives. Paul decided to film their trek into the forest for one of his vlogs. Sadly, they stumbled on a body hanging in the woods, a soul who’d recently ended his life. Rather than stop filming and retreat, Paul and his band of morons filmed the body, made fun of the deceased man, and then uploaded it all to YouTube.

Outrage over the Aokigahara video was swift, and it was removed from the platform. But not before YouTube listed the video on Trending. Paul issued a tepid apology, and then another, and then announced he’d be going offline for the time being.

It took over a week, but YouTube has finally responded to the video, and their silence in the days after it went mega-viral for all the wrong reasons. We should note that Paul, despite being an actual walking bag of garbage, is one of YouTube’s biggest and most successful stars, and they have a rather large monetary stake in his “brand”.

Shortly after the suicide forest video was removed, more footage of Paul’s visit to Japan surfaced. It’s hard to get worse than filming a dead body for views, but apparently Logan Paul likes a challenge.

A day after YouTube’s Twitter statement, the video platform announced it is putting several projects involving Logan Paul on hold indefinitely, and would be removing his channel from their Preferred Program. The program allows brands to sell ads in the top 5% of creators on the platform. Paul can still run ads, like many big channels do, but the removal will likely hit his bottom line. YouTube also gave his channel a strike (3 strikes in a 3-month period means YouTube could terminate the account).

(Image: Facebook/TechCrunch)

 

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