YouTube Takes Action Against Logan Paul over Suicide Victim Video

YouTube has taken action to punish one of their biggest stars, Logan Paul, over a video in which he filmed the hanging body of a suicide victim.

BBC News reports that after the uploading of a video featuring the dead body of a suicide victim, YouTube Star Logan Paul has had his channel removed from YouTube’s Google Preferred program, which made Paul’s channel a “preferred advertising” channel. This meant that when advertisers paid to place ads on certain YouTube channels, Paul’s channel was one of the first to be suggested. Paul received larger shares of ad revenue by being part of the program. This program is reserved exclusively for YouTube’s top 5 percent of content creators.

YouTube has also reportedly paused YouTube Red features in development with Paul. YouTube Red is YouTube’s paid subscription service, one element of which is YouTube Red Originals. Not unlike Netflix Originals, YouTube Red Originals are films or TV shows created by YouTube which feature some of their most famous content creators. Paul starred in the YouTube Red Original film The Thinning, which currently has a 5.9/10 rating on IMDb.

Paul is likely to lose some revenue for not taking part in the Preferred program but to what extent he will be affected is unknown. Paul’s channel is still active on YouTube meaning he’ll still receive the same ad revenue that average YouTuber receive when users watch their content, he just won’t receive the higher advertising rate that he received as part of the Preferred program. With 15 million subscribers, Paul is estimated to have made approximately $12.5 million from his online video antics.

YouTube issued a statement on Paul’s video earlier this week but faced criticism from many who accused the company of being “history revisionists,” amongst other things. In the statement, YouTube claimed that “The channel [Paul’s] violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences.” Many took issue with YouTube’s version of events, including YouTube Star Philip DeFranco who posted a video to Twitter where he called YouTube’s statement “revisionist history bullsh*t,” and a member of YouTube’s own “Trusted Flagger” team.

It now seems that Paul’s removal from the Google Preferred programme and YouTube Red productions are the “further consequences” that the company promised in their earlier statement.