YouTube has made the call to suspend advertising across Logan Paul‘s channels, temporarily cutting off a revenue stream worth millions of dollars, after declaring that his “recent pattern of behaviour” makes him “unsuitable” for brands.
On December 31 of last year, Paul copped an intense backlash when he posted a video of a suicide victim from Japan‘s Aokigahara forest. He pulled it and apologised several hours later, then took a nearly month-long break from YouTube, returning late January with an anti-suicide PSA.
He promised to be “more knowledgeable, more compassionate” in his future videos, a pledge that completely went out the window this week when he uploaded footage of himself repeatedly tasering a dead rat in his Los Angeles home.
In a statement on Friday, YouTube said that the video was in contravention of its advertising guidelines, so they slapped an age restriction warning on it (a significant move, given Logan Paul’s young audience), and announced that they were temporarily pulling his advertising. They said:
“After careful consideration, we have decided to temporarily suspend ads on Logan Paul’s YouTube channels. This is not a decision we made lightly; however, we believe he has exhibited a pattern of behavior in his videos that makes his channel not only unsuitable for advertisers, but also potentially damaging to the broader creator community.”
In the aftermath of his controversial suicide forest video, the 22-year-old was cut from the YouTube Red original series Foursome, and his channels were pulled from the Google Preferred premium advertising program.
YouTube, which is becoming increasingly sensitive about being “brand safe” for advertisers, has said that it will start “manually reviewing” all videos in its Google Preferred program, and set “minimum standards” for content creators.
Logan Paul has not yet publicly responded to YouTube’s latest move.
