Warning: Restricted Content Ahead

  How far is YouTube willing to go in terms of censoring its creators? If the recent controversy with Logan Paul is anything to go by, then I think we still have a long way until creator freedoms are restored. (Spoiler alert! probs never lol).

  I mean, as if it wasn't bad enough that YouTube manually reviewed Logan's video on the suicide forest and decided to leave it up, they appear to be actively seeking and taking down videos that are directly responding to the issue. Both Pyrocynical and Elvis the Alien had their response videos removed due to, "misleading content or insufficient metadata," within two hours of being uploaded. After numerous re-uploads by the creators, their videos have been age-restricted.
 

Now, with that in mind, let's quickly recap; the original video in which Logan Paul, a vlogger with fifteen million subscribers under his belt, uploads a video with a dead man in his thumbnail and shows vulgar footage of the man's corpse while cracking jokes and acting seemingly unaffected is MANUALLY REVIEWED by YouTube themselves and left up on the site until Logan removes it. No age-gate, no take down, and six million views later. Then on the flip side, you have respected creators responding and speaking relative about the situation, showing no offensive or inappropriate content, and for some reason... those just happen to be removed and then age-restricted.

  By the way, Logan's video was re-uploaded by other users on the site and there was no age restriction whatsoever. In fact, it ended up #2 on trending after the original had taken the top spot.

  Are you noticing a theme here? Are you catching the line I'm throwing you? Videos criticising Logan and pointing out what a shitty person he is because of his abysmal behavior are being obliterated from the website at a very efficient fucking rate. I think it's extremely far-fetched and naive to think that YouTube isn't protecting Logan, just like they did with Jake Paul when he threw out false abuse allegations. Logan has only gained from the situation; his channel has grown due to the publicity, and you can bet your fucking ass YouTube is raking in that dollar.

  Something is broken, or deeply, deeply disturbed in the minds of the people running YouTube as a company and a website, and if there isn't? Well that's probably more fucked up than the alternative I've posed to you. The algorithm only favours those with the ability to pump out meaningless content every single day. The reason? It racks up the views and therefore the traffic onto the website. Creators that actually make good, worth-watching content can fuck off as far as YouTube is concerned. They will protect and coddle the ones that make them the most income, and bury the little guys in so much shit that their hard work is never found.

  It's sad. That's the only way to describe it. The lengths YouTube is now willing to go and how far the website has fallen. People used to be able to make a career out of doing something they loved, so what the hell happened to that? Logan Paul happened, Jake Paul happened, people like Danielle Bregoli and Tana Mongeau happened. Relatable garbage is all over the internet now and it fucking plagues YouTube to the point where young and heavily impressionable kids eat that shit up. It's just... it's fucking sad.

  This affects so many creators to the point that they're struggling to get by with the wave of age-restrictions and cases of unnecessary demonetisation. Videos that would be impossible to consider offensive are still having their ads pulled, and YouTube clearly has no issues with their own blatant favouritism. That fact alone means I can't see them altering anything any time soon.

  I decided to fish around for some opinions other than my own, and the responses I received just make me believe even more concretely that something needs to change.

  @_tidalpanic_: "Regarding the Logan Paul situation, I feel he needs his channel removed. PewDiePie said he doesn't believe that should happen to people, but being able to make a career from YouTube is a privilege not a right. After something as grotesque as this, apologies are not enough. If there are no REAL consequences, Logan and people like him will see that the only downside to breaking the rules is public backlash, which fades with time. YouTube needs to make an example of him, they need to remove his channel and remove his YouTube Red movies to prove to other YouTubers that they aren't safe and they can't get away with their distasteful, algorithm-pleasing practices. But of course they won't because he, [Logan], makes them too much money."

  @_amyth0mps0n_: "Honestly, YouTube has gone to shit. Logan Paul is the new 'hit' so they let him do whatever he wants. He's their little golden boy. Apparently YouTube gets triggered when PewDiePie makes a joke that could be considered offensive, but oh no, Logan Paul can do no wrong! Let him post a dead body for all his fans, mostly children, to see! They won't get traumatised or upset! What pisses me off the most is that his fans stick up for him. 'OMG we all make mistakes!' How is it a mistake to post a video about a dead guy hanging from a tree with hardly any censoring? It makes me fucking sick!"

  @jacobdew9059: "With the Logan Paul thing, it highlights that YouTube favours only the rich. This is a no-brainer. However, this is a lot deeper in terms of how many more videos seem to breach the rules. I'm only touching on it, but from what I've heard from Andy Warski, every video uploaded is given an algorithmic code that categorizes the videos into different parts. This also affects monetisation and age-restriction. What Andy found out is that these codes can be altered so that you can remove certain parts and retrieve monetisation. But the main problem with this is that parts of the code have been made so nobody can alter them - therefore YouTube has full control of every video. It might be to crack down on rule breakers, but this impacts every video made including those from innocent creators. This is not confirmed, please don't take this as gospel."

  I apologise for the length of this post, I didn't expect to have this much to say, but the inclusion of the above statements proves that it isn't just me that believes something here is fragmented and needs to be fixed, or at the very least, to be addressed. Whether anything will change in the future is yet to be seen, but I can only hope for the best. YouTube offered so many people another option and it's a shame to see that disrupted. If I find out any more information, I'll drop it in a follow up post sometime.

  Thanks for being here, guys.

Signed
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
05/01/2018

2018: DOA

  I didn't think it needed to be said outright that filming a suicide victim's lifeless body and uploading the footage to YouTube is a disgusting, depraved, insensitive and utterly mindless thing to do but... well, here we are.

  Logan Paul, the former slightly less cunty one of the Paul brothers took the trophy from his younger sibling on New Years Eve when he uploaded 'We found a dead body in the Japanese suicide forest...' to the website. The forest being referred to is of course Aokigahara, national forest of Fujiawaguchiko, where more than a hundred people a year go to check out.

  Within the first day, the video garnered six million views and 460,000 likes before it was removed by Logan himself. It's safe to say the footage should've never existed in the first place, let alone been uploaded to a channel with a subscriber base of fifteen million - the majority of which is made up of kids between the ages of roughly nine and sixteen. In the video, the victim's face is blurred, but it can clearly be seen that he is hanging from a tree and his hands are purple. Logan and his gang of unsympathetic mutants can be seen joking and making offhand comments throughout.

  Apparently Logan's objective when visiting the forest was to make a video about suicide awareness, and if that's true, he got more than he bargained for and is currently dealing with the deserved repercussions. Unfortunately, the family duo are known for their lies and system cheats to rake in the views, thus increasing the ad revenue received. Going by the facts we know already, who knows if this reasoning is even the truth.

  Logan uploaded an apology, (I say that lightly), to his Twitter last night in which he basically apologised for all the aspects that affect him and him alone. He isn't sorry for what he did, he's sorry that what he did has had such an adverse affect on him. He doesn't mention the family, the victim, suicide prevention, or show any signs of remorse at all for what he's done.

  This situation further highlights the fact that YouTube's system is currently broken. Content creators are still being demonetised for something as menial as swearing when there was literally footage of somebody's corpse that managed to slip through the cracks. It doesn't surprise me as much as it concerns me considering the Paul brothers are basically YouTube's new poster boys, (PewDiePie who?) but fuck me, you'd think there'd be some type of cap on that kind of content.

  I daresay that this event will be swept under the rug after a week or so, once everybody gets bored, then the rest of 2018 can follow this particular car-crash accordingly. Could we really have expected a start less problematic than this? It's nice to dream about, I suppose.

  The video of course has since been re-uploaded so there's no forgetting what Logan did, but I'm not going to link it for obvious reasons.

  Instead I will be linking Logan's original apology, (literally just those screenshots), and a suicide prevention hotline. Not all of us take suicide and depression as lightly as Logan Paul, and I can assure you there is help out there. Having the correct sources is half the battle.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Logan Paul's Twitter Apology

Samaritans Suicide Prevention Helpline

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
02/01/2018