Disney, YouTube Cut Ties With PewDiePie, Top YouTube Submitter, Over Anti-Semitic Videos (techcrunch.com)

jo7hs2 writes: Disney's Maker Studios has cut ties PewDiePie, the YouTube submitter with 53 million subscribers, over anti-Semitic clips the submitter released earlier in the year. The clips, three videos published in January, have since been removed from the channel. According to TechCrunch, "They included one skit in which [Felix Kjellberg, PewDiePie's real name] paid a Sri Lanka-based group of men to hold up a sign that read 'Death to All Jews,' while another featured a clip of a man dressed as Jesus saying that 'Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.' Kjellberg used freelance job finding site Fiverr for both clips. He argued that he wasn't serious with either and instead wanted to show the things people will do for money." A spokesperson for Maker Studios, which was acquired by Disney in 2014, told the Wall Street Journal, "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." Writing on his Tumblr blog, Kjellberg said the purpose of the examples was "to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online." He continued, "I picked something that seemed absurd to me -- That people on Fiverr would say anything for 5 dollars. I think it's important to say something and I want to make one thing clear: I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes."

UPDATE 2/14/17: YouTube has also cut ties with Kjellberg. A YouTube representative confirmed to Business Insider that the company has canceled its YouTube Red original show starring Kjellberg. Business Insider reports: "Kjellberg's show, 'Scare PewDiePie,' was a YouTube original accessible through the company's subscription service, YouTube Red. The show was about to premiere its second season. YouTube is also removing Kjellberg from Google's preferred advertising program, which helps the platform's most popular personalities attract bigger advertisers."

Comments

ByeBye, PewDiePie

[Anonymous Coward]

And nothing of value was lost. I don't get the adulation around this guy. Get a life, people.

"I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes." Yeah, right. Apart from "paying a Sri Lanka-based group of men to hold up a sign that read 'Death to All Jews,' while another featured a clip of a man dressed as Jesus saying that 'Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.'
 
  "PewDiePie argued that he wasn't serious with either and instead wanted to show the things people will do for money."
Oh I think he made that point brilliantly... about himself.

PS. What the fuck is going on at Slashdot? The banner ads today are so fucking huge I need a bigger monitor. Did they go "Not enough people are clicking on banner ads for shit they don't want. They mustn't be able to see them. Lets make them even bigger." No guys, they're shit we don't want. I mean, selling "Learn to Code" bundles on Slashdot is like trying to sell ice to eskimos.

Irreverent vs. Inappropriate

[cervesaebraciator]

"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."

It's funny how one of these words has a positive connotation, and the other one a negative. This, despite the fact that opposing groups might apply each term to the same content. All inappropriate means in a context where one is praising someone for irreverence is that the irreverence was applied to a preferred group.

I am reminded of Isaac Hayes's objection to South Park's irreverence toward Scientology.

ironic

[slew]

Apparently this PewDie bro used to make money making Rape jokes videos, but apparently Maker Studios (Disney) was okay with that because of "money".
Now, as a "joke", this bro paid random people to $5 (on fiver) to record themselves holding antisemitic signs and felt remorse...

So, by using fiver to point out that anyone will do anything for money, but probably later regret it, he pointed out to Disney their course of action...

I just can't feel sorry for the bro ;^)

Re:disney are idiots

[by (1706743)]

There's a difference between being generically offensive, and being offensive by targeting specific groups.

You don't have to agree that one is more offensive than the other, but to ignore that the two cases are different isn't particularly productive.

And on the other end of the spectrum you have stuff like South Park, which basically tries to be offensive by targeting *every* group; in some strange egalitarian sense, this makes it "less offensive," as the motives are clearly for humor, rather than hatred towards a specific group.

You aren't training your feed properly.

[hackwrench]

There is a button somewhere on every video that you can click on that says not interested. Do that enough and they will stop showing up. For that matter I click the subscribe button on just about any fool that comments on videos I like regardless of whether they have any intention of making videos and am probably technically subscribed to PewDiePie, but his videos never show up as recommendations for me because I actually manage my blinking YouTube situation.

Re:Mickey Maus

[coastwalker]

Actually although this is meant to be funny it is not and neither was what Pewdiepie did either. I understand that for people under the age of thirty "Ironic" means that you can say anything. There are still a few older people around who are too square for that daddy o. There are some things that happened in the second world war that scared the fucking shit out of most of the planet when they found out what had been going on. You see the nice German people who are currently having the piss taken out of them because they are taking hundreds of thousands of dark skinned Muslims as refugees. The nice German people took 6 million Jews, Gypsys, Black people, Homosexuals and gassed them to death because they reclassified them as dangerous animals. Now I am not saying that being ironic makes you a Nazi death camp commander but you do not have any sensitivity to the slippery slope that the German people fell down. In other words you appear to be disrespectful to the idea that there are some ideas that are too horrible to contemplate even as a joke. Unfortunately as you have no idea what it is that you have done wrong it is apparent that the world is ready once again for horrible things to be done. It is no coincidence that Nationalism and hatred of foreigners is once again popular. The lessons of the Holocaust have been forgotten and the world is ready once again for appalling crimes against humanity So no, jokes about the Holocaust are never funny, not even ironic ones.

Bullshit

[JThundley]

This is a lot of bullshit. He was making a joke, it's very obvious. He wasn't espousing racist beliefs. Youtube and Disney took the clips out of context. Watch this video about the ordeal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLNSiFrS3n4

This also happened to another streaming personality, Destiny. He was having a debate about racism (he's against it), and said something along the lines of "If you're argument is 'n*ggers are too dumb to do X, Y and Z, then blah blah'. Speaking in the 3rd person; speaking as the very racists he's combating. I guess the N word is to controversial to say in any context, he was banned from Twitch.

And now I'm having trouble posting this because of the lameness filter! I can't say the N word here for the same reason! Jesus fuck! Yes I'm trying to say the full N word, no I'm not a racist, I'm sorry if you're offended, but fuck you for changing my speech.