Logan Paul: YouTube suspends star's adverts over 'potentially damaging' videos
The 22-year-old is punished after he tried to monetise a video of himself using a Taser on dead rats.
Friday 9 February 2018 19:44, UK
YouTube has suspended all adverts from Logan Paul's channels after he posted "potentially damaging" videos, including one where he used a Taser on dead rats.
The video-posting platform said Paul's "pattern of behaviour" was unsuitable for advertisers.
In a statement to Sky News, it said: "After careful consideration, we have decided to temporarily suspend ads on Logan Paul's YouTube channels.
"This is not a decision we made lightly, however, we believe he has exhibited a pattern of behaviour in his videos that makes his channel not only unsuitable for advertisers, but also potentially damaging to the broader creator community."
Last month, Paul - who has more than 16 million subscribers - faced a huge backlash for posting a video entitled "We found a dead body in the Japanese suicide forest".
It showed him and his friends joking around after finding the body of a man hanging in Japan's Aokigahara forest.
Paul later apologised for the clip, which was viewed more than a million times before it was taken down, saying it was "wrong" and "misguided".
YouTube said that a new video of Paul using a Taser on dead rats was among the infractions that had prompted it to suspend adverts on his channel.
The video was uploaded earlier this week.
He had also deliberately tried to monetise the video that violated YouTube's advertiser-friendly guidelines, they said.
As well as that, the site said it did not approve of Paul encouraging young viewers to participate in the Tide Pod Challenge, a dangerous social media trend which involves people filming themselves eating laundry detergent capsules.
YouTube said the content in Paul's recent videos made him "unsuitable for brands" and "potentially damaging to the YouTube community".
It is not known how much the decision to suspend the adverts will cost Paul.
According to analytics site SocialBlade, Paul earns up to $14.3m (£10.3m) a year, and up to $1.2m (£870,000) a month, based on common YouTube ad rates.
After the suicide video controversy, YouTube also suspended its original projects with 22-year-old Paul and said he would no longer appear in its comedy series Foursome.
His channels were also removed from YouTube's Google Preferred platform, which features its most popular content in packages for sale to advertisers.