Nearly a week after American YouTube Logan Paul faced a severe backlash for posting a video showing an alleged suicide victim, YouTube has tweeted out an open letter condemning the move. Still the ‘open letter’ does not name the vlogger. Google’s video platform has also faced criticism for how it handled the whole crisis.
In a series of tweets, YouTube said that the company will be taking steps to ensure a video like this never gets circulated again. Though YouTube doesn’t explicitly mention Logan Paul in any of the tweets, it is understood the company is referring to his ‘suicide’ video. The vlogger could face further consequences, given his channel violated YouTube’s community guidelines.
To recall, Paul’s video titled “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest“, which was shot in Japan’s suicide forest, was removed from YouTube shortly after receiving backlash. It showed a dead body hanging from a tree, being made fun of by Paul. The video was viewed over six million times before it was taken down from YouTube by Paul.
The vlogger eventually apologised saying the video was to “raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention”. However, his comments did not go down well with people globally, who took to Twitter to express their anger against Paul’s actions. Paul apologised again on a video posted January 1.
An open letter to our community:
— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018
Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You’re right to be. You deserve to know what's going on.
“Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views. As Anna Akana put it perfectly: “That body was a person someone loved. You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness,” reads one of YouTube’s tweet.
It’s taken us a long time to respond, but we’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying. We know that the actions of one creator can affect the entire community, so we’ll have more to share soon on steps we’re taking to ensure a video like this is never circulated again.
— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018
YouTube, in November, stepped up enforcement of its guidelines for videos aimed at children, after the video streaming service was criticised that it has failed to protect children from adult content. YouTube vice president Johanna Wright wrote in a blog post that over 50 user channels were removed and the company stopped running ads on more than 3.5 million videos.
An open letter to our community:
— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018
Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You’re right to be. You deserve to know what's going on.
Like many others, we were upset by the video that was shared last week.
— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018
The Logan Paul controversy has once again raised questions around YouTube and its content monitoring policies. YouTube also faced an advertiser backlash in 2017 over hate speech videos and how they were raking up ads from big brands. Homophobic, racist videos were allowed to show ads from big brands, which had announced a boycott of the platform. Brands like Pepsi, Walmart, Starbucks had reportedly pulled out of advertising on YouTube.
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