YouTube boss explains why she WON’T ban Logan Paul after dead body and rat taser videos
It seems filming the body of a person who died by apparent suicide isn't enough to get you the boot from YouTube.
Social media sensation Logan Paul did just that during a recent trip to Japan, and his channel on the Google-owned video service (with its 16.7 million subscribers) is still kicking about.
And, YouTube isn't about to change that, because he hasn't met the platform's criteria for being banned, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
“He hasn’t done anything that would cause those three strikes,” Wojcicki said, referring to the policy that can lead to a YouTuber's account getting banned if they continue to break the rules.
She continued: “We can’t just be pulling people off our platform ... They need to violate a policy. We need to have consistent [rules]. This is like a code of law.”
Wojcicki made the comments in response to a question from tech journalist Kara Swisher at the Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, California.
Calls for Paul's removal from YouTube reached a crescendo last month, after he shared the suicide forest clip to his popular channel.
He subsequently apologised for the video, and later did the same over a video in which he shot a taser at a dead rat.
YouTube's response was to temporarily suspend ads on Paul's channel, which is estimated to net him £867,000 a month.
YouTube's policies target a wide range of inappropriate behaviour, including copyright violations and violence.
But, it's not enough if someone considers a creator's clip tasteless, Wojcicki said.
“What you think is tasteless is not necessarily what someone else would think is tasteless,” she said. “We need to have consistent laws, so that in our policies, so we can apply it consistently to millions of videos, millions of creators.”
YouTube is facing a growing backlash over the distribution of controversial videos on its platform. Recent clips include the Tide Pod challenge, which saw people eating the laundry detergent pods – which YouTube removed last month.
There's also the worrying trend of adult videos designed to fool children into watching them on the YouTube Kids app. These put superheroes and Disney characters in violent and sexual scenarios.
YouTube responded with a new policy that age-restricts the clips on YouTube, automatically filtering them out of the YouTube Kids app in the process.
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