UPDATED 23:30 EDT / JANUARY 10 2018

APPS

YouTube decides to punish Logan Paul for his controversial suicide video

YouTube has decided that YouTube star Logan Paul should be punished for his bad taste video that showed a suicide victim in what is known as Japan’s “Suicide Forest.”

The company today announced it has removed Paul’s channel from its premium advertising service Google Preferred and from a show that appeared on YouTube Red. The show, called “Foursome,” was a comedy web series. YouTube also said some of Paul’s originals are now “on hold,” including his upcoming YouTube film, “The Thinning: New World Order.”

Paul (pictured) stoked the ire of the public when he posted a clip of a dead body hanging from a tree in the Aokigahara forest, a place that holds the distinction of being the most popular place in Japan to kill yourself. The crude way in which Paul created the clip, and his insensitivity in general while in Japan, has provoked criticism from the public and the media alike.

YouTube was criticized for how at first it dealt with the video, although now the channel says it has had enough time to understand the gravity of the situation. “It’s taken us a long time to respond, but we’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying,” YouTube wrote in an open letter on Twitter. “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.”

The company went on to tweet the words that many people had been thinking, which was “suicide is not a joke” and shouldn’t be the main force of racking up views. Twenty-two-year-old Paul hasn’t posted on his channel, which has 15.6 million subscribers, since the video in question. He later tweeted that he was taking some “time to reflect.”

YouTube’s action doesn’t mean that Paul has been banned from the channel. Far from it — he will still be able to make money from his videos, but now his clips will be part of YouTube’s general monetization program.

Image: YouTube

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