Unless you've been living under a rock for the past month or so, you'll probably know the name Logan Paul. But if you have been living under a rock, a) can I please join you? I don't like it out here, stupid people keep doing bad things and b) let me catch you up.
Logan Paul is a YouTuber who makes prank videos and daily vlogs. He and his YouTuber brother have a history of problematic behaviour (these tweets are but the curled tip of a shitberg) but Logan recently made a video where he went into so-called "Suicide Forest" in Japan and laughed over someone’s dead body. When he was called out by basically everyone in the world he deleted the video and apologised – twice – but has since uploaded videos of himself tasering dead rats and encouraging people to eat Tide Pods . So it’s probably fair to say he’s learnt nothing.
YouTube's response to Paul’s stunt was too little and too late . The video had been resting unchallenged at the #1 Trending spot on the homepage for a long time, and it was Paul himself who removed the video after the backlash – and only then after it had gone seriously viral, bursting out of the bubble YouTube scandals usually stay in. All this has put a very big spotlight on a question the platform probably wants to avoid: er, what is YouTube’s future?
The particular morality of YouTube
The world is full of good and bad people, kids, but YouTube gives a platform for the more extreme ends of the spectrum to publicise their dodgy behaviour and views – whether that’s PewDiePie using the n-word on livestreams, MRAs uploading videos about why women are subhuman, or even parents “pranking” their children so badly that they are charged with actual neglect.
And because of this, YouTube culture has developed its own sense of morality. While plenty of people around the world condemned Logan Paul for his suicide forest video, his more devoted fans defended him – just like devoted fans of Alex Day and Sam Pepper defended them when they were accused of sexual abuse, and KSI’s fans defended him when he was accused of misogyny. Seemingly to these fans, their idols’ fuck-ups weren’t that bad in the first place... and anyway they apologised, so who cares?
Although Logan Paul and his ilk’s current superfans will defend him, he may not get any new ones; the next generation will take one look at their racist, sexist shit and log off.
YouTube, meanwhile, stays silent. Very little is done by YouTube to manage the content on the site and, on the whole, the community’s self-policing has worked well up to now. However, with no-one around to keep people in check, things have been moving further and further towards the dark side, and while YouTubers and their fans might be perfectly happy with this, it’s putting off new people or casual fans from getting more involved.
The problems don’t just lie in the content, either. The comments section anywhere online is a minefield, but it’s particularly bad on YouTube. For a long time – and only after pressure from superstar YouTubers such as John and Hank Green – it was incredibly hard to have any kind of moderation in the comments on your YouTube channel. As Akilah Hughs put it so eloquently, “Google can map the entire world and make self-driving cars but I still have to personally block the n-word in YouTube's comment section.” Things are better now, but still not ideal; someone can still post hate-speech without automatically being blocked by YouTube’s moderation system, and while it’s easy to hide or block a user from your channel, this still relies on the creator seeing and interacting with harassment. Not fun.
It’s hard if you’re a small fish in a big pond
Another problem is that the few systems YouTube has put in place to control bad behaviour are also making it harder for smaller YouTubers to grow their audience and their channels. It’s already quite hard to get noticed if you’re a new creator – YouTube has been criticised widely for only promoting certain vloggers, with smaller or issue-focused YouTubers never making it on to the homepage, not matter how much they follow best practice. But recently, in an effort to stop controversial content being made, YouTube put controls on what kind of content could be monetised. This was supposed to just affect “adult” content, but LGBTQ+ YouTubers soon realised that all of their content was being demonetised and hidden from search engines too.
And after Logan Paul’s little stunt, things have got worse. Recent changes to their Partnership Program mean that you need a larger audience before you can monetise your videos, and YouTube is highly unlikely to promote videos that they then can’t make any money from. Smaller, newer, issues-based and/or LGBTQ+ creators could bring some much-needed balance to the platform, but the goalposts have moved so far away that it’s unlikely many new creators will be motivated to try and reach them. It’d be like Luke Skywalker taking a “Phoebe teaching Joey guitar” approach to training and not letting Rey hold a light saber until she’d done hours of Jedi practise, while Kylo Ren is slicing the heads off the Resistance and force-choking anyone crosses his path. The light will never win. The good guys just don’t have a chance.
So what needs to happen?
The thing is this: each generation is, for want of a better term, woker than the last. Although Logan Paul and his ilk’s current superfans will defend him, he may not get any new ones; the next generation will take one look at their racist, sexist shit and log off. Fair enough.
However, if and when this happens it could mean that YouTube, which depends on revenue earned from views, will cease to exist. Because of crappy, unchecked creators and toxic comment sections, YouTube has gone from a free-thinking online utopia to a place where hate and prejudice can thrive. While this isn’t unusual – just look at Twitter, where you are now always just six keystrokes away from a literal Nazi – it is a problem in terms of attracting the new generation. If the powers that be at YouTube keep burying their head in the sand and refusing to give people the features they're crying out for (again, like Twitter) then it hasn’t got a chance of surviving.
But if it tackles its issue head on, it might be able to save itself. There’s still plenty of good in YouTube, I know it. They just need to encourage the light.
