https://kotaku.com/japan-isnt-happy-with-logan-pauls-tokyo-video-either-1821766445
I never did bother to look at his Tokyo videos (not worth giving people like this views period) so I didn’t realize just how disrespectful this guy (and his team) acted.
A quote on a Polygon article noted that YouTube confirmed they gave him a channel strike (BFD). As I wrote previously, not surprising. YouTube cares more about making bank from their big money makers since they are complicit with encouraging this kind of behavior; the punishment in this case is a slap on the wrist (generally zero accountability). If this were someone else who didn’t matter much to YouTube’s bottomline, the channel would have been closed.
There’s another reason why I mentioned that YouTube is heading towards being the top shithole of the Internet. The fact his vlog video was trending in the #1 spot (this also being after the fact that the reported video was still approved by their community moderation team with no restrictions added).
Google support document for Trending:
Absolute garbage considering the outrage happening over a 24 hour period where YouTube remained tone-deaf to it.
Sure, Paul has made the decision to step away to “reflect”. It’s looks good from a PR perspective and will allow some of this to simmer down. Financially, it’s not going to make a huge dent when you consider he is already a multi-millionaire (not just from YouTube ad revenue but also his merchandise and other corporate sponsorships).
The point is that these online platforms have double standards at play when it comes to their codes of conduct/terms of use; when their biggest money makers run afoul of the rules, one should not be surprised when the rules are bent in those individuals favor.
UPDATE (2018-1-10): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/technology/logan-paul-youtube.html
After remaining mostly silent about the outrage regarding one of their top stars, YouTube took additional action on Logan Paul (though far short from actually closing/demonetizing his channel or banning him completely from the platform).
YouTube only dropped him from their premium advertising platform (reserved for the top 5% content creators where they are guaranteed revenue from premium advertisers) and have put whatever YouTube Red projects which he was going to have major roles in, on hold.
His channel will still generate revenue (at lower but still non-trivial amounts when taking into account how much views his videos get) which he can make a comfortably living off of if he downsizes his multi-million dollar lifestyle and curtails the side expenses associated with the “talent management” aspects of his YouTube channel.
