YouTube backed itself into a corner with Logan Paul and PewDiePie

LINK

YouTube surprised everyone last week by releasing Logan Paul’s premium movie, The Thinning: New World Order, a high-gloss YouTube Red film that had previously been put on indefinite hold after the star filmed a dead body in Japan. The release has been controversial because it not only seemed like YouTube was rewarding a problematic creator, but also that the company treats Logan Paul differently than other YouTubers.

Days after Logan Paul’s suicide forest controversy broke out, YouTube reprimanded the vlogger by slashing his advertising prospects on the platform, as well as indefinitely delaying the release of Thinning: New World Order. Since then, Paul has embarked on a redemption tour that more or less allowed him to continue business as usual on the video platform, and with YouTube’s latest decision, that redemption arc now seems institutionally endorsed.

Complicating all of this is that a year before these events, YouTube canned the release of Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg’s YouTube Red series, Scare PewDiePie, after the Swedish internet celebrity paid two men to hold a sign up that read “Death to All Jews.” While Kjellberg maintains that it was a “joke” without any “serious” intent, the stunt disgusted many on the internet. YouTube soon canceled the release of his show and took him off their premium advertising service in response.

On social media, many onlookers have compared the two incidents and pointed out the apparent inconsistency in how YouTube upholds its own rules. Why has Logan Paul been treated differently than Kjellberg?