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YouTube has punished YouTube star Logan Paul, again

This time it has turned off all of his YouTube ads, for promoting the Tide Pod challenge and tasering a rat.

YouTube star Logan Paul
YouTube star Logan Paul
Logan Paul, about to taser a rat, in a Feb 5 video
Peter Kafka
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

YouTube has punished Logan Paul, one of the video site’s biggest stars, again.

This time, the world’s largest video site has temporarily turned off all of the ads in Paul’s videos, for offenses that include tasering a rat in a YouTube video and promising, presumably in jest, to eat laundry detergent.

Earlier this year, YouTube had previously reprimanded Paul for showing the body of a suicide victim, by taking him off its most lucrative advertising tier and scrapping a YouTube-sponsored movie that was supposed to star Paul.

Here’s a statement from a YouTube rep:

“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 behavior in his videos that makes his channel not only unsuitable for advertisers, but also potentially damaging to the broader creator community.”

Up until this year, Paul was one of YouTube’s favorite stars, with more than 10 million subscribers. But YouTube has also spent the last year fending off a series of controversies about inappropriate content on the site and is trying to convince marketers that the site is a safe place for them to run their ads.

If you want to watch Paul tasering a rat, you can see it near the five-minute mark of this clip, published Feb. 5.

It’s worth noting that another one of Paul’s actions that bothered YouTube executives didn’t happen on YouTube. Instead, they’re upset that he joked about the Tide Pod challenge to his Twitter followers, via a now-deleted tweet.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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