One of the big things missing from the mess caused by YouTuber Logan Paul uploading a video of a suicide was an actual statement from YouTube on the subject. The original video was pulled from YouTube the same day it was published, but it was re-uploaded hundreds of times and continued to cause problems throughout the week. Still, no official statement from the company on what would be happening to stop this kind of thing from happening again.
Today YouTube addressed the situation through five tweets promising potential action. Eventually.
An open letter to our community:
Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You're right to be. You deserve to know what's going on.An open letter to our community:
Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You're right to be. You deserve to know what's going on.— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018January 9, 2018
In its open letter, YouTube made it clear it was listening to the YouTube community and working on solutions internally. Among those solutions is a way to prevent the suicide video or other like it from ever making its way to YouTube. The company also claims to be looking at further consequences for Logan Paul. As a result of violating the terms of service, Paul's account will have earned a "strike" against its ability to monetize videos. Multiple strikes results in monetization being deactivated or the account being banned, but it's not clear this is what YouTube has in mind if further action is taken.
Preventing violent videos from hitting YouTube has been a "priority" for the company for quite a while now, and success has clearly been limited. If new steps to block this kind of content are announced officially, it will be interesting to see how effective it truly is.
