YouTube is suspending all ads on the channel of vlogger Logan Paul due to his “recent pattern of behavior,” which includes a video of him using a taser on dead rats and a widely shared joke about eating Tide Pods.Paul, who has 16.7 million subscribers and a devoted base of tweens and teens, has been courting controversy for months now, as has his younger brother Jake Paul, who is also a massively popular vlogger.In early January, Logan Paul posted a video in which he found the body of an apparent suicide victim while in a Japanese forest. On the same trip, in videos he put online, he also tried to “catch” Japanese people like Pokémon and shoved a dead fish and an octopus tentacle into the faces of passersby.
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In response to the wide backlash to Paul’s Japan videos, YouTube cut his channel from their Preferred ad network, which pairs top content creators with big-name advertisers. The video network has become extremely cautious about its relationships with high-profile “creators” on YouTube, after a year of controversies in which blue-chip brands found their ads running alongside terroristic, illegal, or otherwise offensive content.
Paul himself penned a public apology and then took a social media hiatus, from which he returned about two weeks ago with a music video about the seriousness of suicide. Then, earlier this week, he posted a video in which he and two friends tasered a pair of dead rats.Logan Paul did not immediately respond to a request for comment from VICE News.Cover: Logan Paul speaks onstage during the Teen Choice Awards 2017 at Galen Center on August 13, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Fox/Getty Images)