At the beginning of the year, controversial YouTube star Logan Paul received headline coverage for a video he released in which he visited the famous Japanese Suicide Forest, found a dead body and recorded it. Since then, Logan Paul has received tons of well-earned criticism and backlash from not only the YouTube community but from fans including loss of ad revenue and having ties severed with sponsors.

On January 4, Paul stated he would be stepping away from YouTube for a while. However, in early February, Logan Paul stated he would be returning to YouTube. The question is, is this the right thing for Paul to do? The answer is NO, for a few reasons.

Over the last few years, YouTubers making money off their videos has become something of a gamble due to some sponsors pulling ads, YouTube changing the rules for what videos YouTubers can make money off of, and YouTube changing the rules as to what is “advertiser-friendly”.

Part of this comes from an incident in late 2016 in which another YouTuber, PewDiePie had clips taken out of context by the Wall Street Journal painting him as a Nazi. Because of this, smaller YouTube channels began to suffer. So, if YouTubers are suffering because of shoddy journalism, then they are going to suffer for a big YouTuber filming a dead body.

The other reason that Logan Paul returning to YouTube is a bad idea is because there have been other channels that have suffered for doing a fraction of what Logan Paul has done. YouTube has a set list of guidelines for uploaders and if violated, then YouTube will either demonotize or remove the video. Because of this, there have been many YouTubers that have gotten their videos taken down due to violations of the rules or have gotten their content demonetized for not violating the rules but not for being considered “advertiser-friendly.”

An example of this was after the Las Vegas Shooting. YouTuber Casey Neistat made a video talking about the tragedy from a neutral point of view, not giving any opinion on gun rights or mental health, and linking to ways to help the victims of the attack and even promising that he would donate any ad revenue to help victims of the attack. YouTube told him that the video wasn’t “advertiser-friendly” and demonetized it almost instantly because “they won’t run ads on videos promoting tragedy.” However, when Logan Paul uploaded this video it took YouTube a while to take any action on the video. This shows a double standard that YouTube is holding toward Logan Paul, trying to protect him at all costs, yet punishing those who only somewhat step out of line.

Things haven’t been 100% unfair, however, recently YouTube has announced that because of the latest stunts of Logan Paul, they would be demonetizing his channel entirely, making him unable to make money off of any of his videos. YouTube released a statement on February 9 saying “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.”

This isn’t the first time Logan Paul has caused controversy either. In a recently released video, Logan was shown running around Japan being disrespectful towards their culture as well as being disruptive in the streets. Logan Paul and his brother Jake have also created videos with faked attempts on their lives, and have famously harassed other members of their group “Team 10” and have publically faked an assault on Jake’s assistant Meg Zelly.