Logan Paul Won’t Be Banned From YouTube

The controversial YouTube ‘star’ Logan Paul hasn’t done enough yet to deserve to be banned from YouTube, the video sharing site’s Chief Executive Officer has said.

Logan Paul has been severely criticized in recent months for the content shown in videos he has created and shared on the site, but his actions have not been enough for him to be banned, said Susan Wojcicki, last week at Recode’s Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, California. “We do terminate accounts all the time,’ she claimed. “We do have a three strikes rule, and if somebody violates three times, then we terminate those accounts,” she said.

Logan Paul… A thousand words in one picture, and none of them good? You decide

Controversial

Paul has regularly courted a certain level of criticism for many of the videos he has posted. In January, however many thought he went too far after he posted a video online showing the body of a man who had killed himself in a forest in Japan.

The video received millions of views before it was removed by Paul amid a tsunami of criticism, with many labeling the video as crass, insensitive, and potentially dangerous. The 22-year-old American, who has over 16 million subscribers on the Google owned YouTube, was also labeled “disrespectful”, a “moron” and “disgusting”, after continuing to film the body of suicide victim and joking with his friends after discovering the body in Aokigahara forest. The forest, located at the base of Mount Fuji, has special spiritual significance for many Japanese people, and is a notorious area for suicide. Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world.

All apologies?

“Where do I begin … Let’s start with this – I’m sorry,” Paul said after removing the video. “I’m often reminded of how big of a reach I truly have and with great power comes great responsibility. For the first time in my life I’m regretful to say I handled that power incorrectly. It won’t happen again.”

Those words have however been put to the test after a recent video in which he was shown tasering dead rats. As a result YouTube have stripped all of Paul’s videos of ads, and in effect “demonetizing” them, and any money Logan Paul may have earned from them. “We think that’s actually a pretty strong statement…We can’t just be pulling people off our platform ,’ said Wojicki. “They need to violate a policy. We need to have consistent [rules]. This is like a code of law…What you think is tasteless is not necessarily what someone else would think is tasteless.

Money talks

It is however no surprise that YouTube isn’t particularly keen to ban  Logan Paul. He is one of YouTube’s biggest stars, and earns both himself and YouTube millions of dollars. Paul has some 16 million subscribers to his channel, and YouTube take 40 percent of all ad revenue. At the time of writing, Paul’s videos have been viewed 3.27 billion times, and he has 4.3 million Twitter followers.

YouTube is therefore understandably hesitant to ban Logan Paul. They have though updated its policies so that it can take action faster should someone be as moronic to post content of swinging dead bodies or shooting tasers at dead animals. YouTube have also placed an ‘age gate’ restriction on the video of the dead rat tasering.