YouTube and Disney Fire Top YouTuber Pewdiepie For Anti-Semitic Videos
YouTuber PewDiePie has been fired from both Google and Disney. The drastic step had to be taken after PewDiePie shared back-to-back allegedly anti-Semitic videos.
According to NME, Felix Kjellberg who goes by his YouTube name PewDiePie is currently number one in the video sharing medium. He has over 53 million YouTube subscribers and his videos have been watched by people for more than 14 billion times.
"Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate," Wall Street Journal quoted a spokesperson for Maker Studies saying. "Maker Studios has made the decision to end our affiliation with him going forward."
For the last few months, PewDiePie has been posting some controversial videos on his channel. Although the videos were meant to be humorous in nature but it was based on anti-Semantic nature. This attracted criticism from a large number of people including his own fan base.
One such video showcased a man who was dressed as Jesus saying things like "Hitler did nothing wrong." Another video featured two men holding up a sign that read "Death to all Jews."
PewDiePie admitted in his blog that the only reason behind those videos were to show "how crazy the modern world is". He further acknowledged that the jokes he used were ultimately offensive. However PewDiePie insisted that he doesn't support any hate-based groups personally in any way.
Following Disney's decision,YouTube has followed the same path and severed ties with PewDiePie, as reported by The Guardian. YouTube has also canceled PewDiePie's reality series "Scare" and his vlogger's membership of premium advertising programme. Thankfully, his channel didn't get shut down.
Due to the nature of the videos and seeing the controversy they have created Google and Disney have decided to terminate PewDiePie's contract. But the real reason one should worry about is PewDiePie's removal from Google YouTube Preferred advertising program, Forbes noted.
This removal can very well impact the advertisement and popularizing of YouTube Red subscription service that was hugely dependent on PewDiePie and his fame as number one to promote the brand. This may scare off some other popular brands to do business with YouTubers in future.
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