PewDiePie criticizes YouTube, says Logan Paul received lighter punishment

YouTube

• PewDiePie lashed out at YouTube’s leadership for its decision
  to release an original movie starring fellow YouTuber Logan Paul.
  Paul’s movie was paused in light of his infamous Japan ‘suicide
  forest’ video.
• YouTube delayed Paul’s movie for 10 months, but PewDiePie’s
  original series has been on hold since February 2017, when the
  video star made anti-Semitic remarks.
• Both YouTubers have managed to maintain large followings even
  amid controversies.
• YouTube says it released Paul’s movie because it involved
  others and wasn’t a solo project, and now says Paul is considered
  to be in good standing with the company.

Felix Kjellberg, the YouTuber known
as PewDiePie, and Logan Paul have both fallen from
YouTube’s good graces over the last year, with each facing their
fair share of controversies. Now, Kjellberg is criticizing the
way YouTube responded to each of their respective controversies
in a new video, taking aim at the company’s leadership, which he
feels has treated him unfairly.

YouTube
quietly premiered a movie Paul stars in  — “The
Thinning: New World Order” — on its YouTube Premium
subscription service recently, to little fanfare. It caught the
attention of Kjellberg, who boasts more YouTube
channel subscribers than anyone else at 67 million.

Kjellberg took offense that YouTube had released Paul’s movie,
yet would not release the second season of his YouTube Premium
series “Scare PewDiePie.” 

Kjellberg voiced his frustration with YouTube in a new video on
his channel.

“It’s kind of amazing how a billion-dollar company can be
so inept at leadership,” Kjellberg said in
his video. “If you want to be taken seriously, you need to
apply the same rules for everyone.”

Kjellberg said YouTube is treating him unfairly, hitting him with
a stricter punishment than Paul, and that the offenses the two
YouTubers committed were pretty similar.

The mistakes that Kjellberg refers to include multiple
videos
where he made anti-Semitic jokes or included Nazi imagery.
The Wall
Street Journal found the videos right on his YouTube
channel back in February 2017, including a video where he paid
two men to hold a sign saying “Death to all
Jews.” 
The response was swift; YouTube
canceled the second season of the PewDiePie series and cut
all business ties with him.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2018, when a similar
series of events took place, this time concerning Logan Paul. The
YouTuber
posted a (since deleted) video from an area in Japan dubbed
the “suicide forest,” and recorded the body of a man hanging from
a tree. Reaction to this was also pretty immediate, and YouTube

put Paul’s movie on hold.

Although the punishment that YouTube doled out to the two men was
pretty similar — putting their original content on hold, making
their videos ineligible for lucrative YouTube Preferred ads —
Paul’s movie was released after a 10-month delay. 

“Maybe it’s because I joked about Jews and that’s a more
sensitive topic than showing a dead body,” Kjellberg says in his
video. “I think that’s probably what some people think at
least.”

A YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider that the movie
was released because the movie is not Paul’s project alone, but a
production that Paul was hired for along with other cast and crew
members.

“In fairness to all of [the cast and crew] and the fans who
have been asking for the sequel, we decided to release ‘The
Thinning: New World Order,'” YouTube said in a statement.

YouTube said that Paul is now considered to be in good
standing with the company.

Both YouTubers have faced multiple controversies

Both Kjellberg and Paul maintain massive social media followings
and loyal fans, and both have landed in hot water for their
actions and words. Here’s a recap.

Paul’s missteps:

Kjellberg’s missteps:

• In February 2017, nine videos on his YouTube channel were
  found to show Kjellberg making
  anti-Semitic remarks, including the video that features the
  “death to the Jews” sign. 
• During a Twitch livestream in September 2017 showing
  Kjellberg playing video games, he uses a racial slur while
  yelling at the game. “What a f—–g n—–!”
  Kjellberg said. “Jeez! Oh my god! What the f—? Sorry, but
  what the f—?” 
• When singer Demi Lovato was hospitalized over the summer
  for an apparent drug overdose,
  Kjellberg shared an image in a (since deleted) tweet that
  depicted Lovato asking her mom for money to buy a burger,
  and then instead using it to buy heroin.