YouTube Removes Logan Paul From Google Preferred, Vows To Review Screening Process

It took YouTube some time to make a statement after one of its biggest stars posted a video of a dead body in a forest in Japan known as "suicide forest." The dense area is known for being a space where people go to take their own lives. The video showed Logan Paul, a YouTuber with more than 15 million subscribers, and his friends who he was traveling with, entering Aokigahara, a forest in Japan and coming upon a dead body.

The video has since been removed from YouTube but Paul and his friends filmed the body, included it in the vlog, and make insensitive comments and jokes. Paul posted an apology video in the days following the original New Year's Eve post but YouTube remained mostly silent on the topic until this week.

YouTube posted "An open letter to our community" Tuesday in the form of a thread of tweets on Twitter. In the thread, YouTube said, "We were upset by the video that was shared last week," and "We expect more of the creators who build their community on @YouTube, as we’re sure you do too. The channel violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences."

Additionally, on Tuesday, YouTube made the decision to remove Paul's channel and videos from Google Preferred. That platform offers advertisers a spot on the top five percent of content, or the most popular content, on the site among the age group of 18 to 34-year-old viewers, says Google.

Now Google is also planning to spend extra efforts vetting those videos as a response to advertisers who expressed concerns about the content in the videos as well as Paul's video, Bloomberg News reported.

The effort to possibly screen Google Preferred videos more closely is part of an ongoing effort to better monitor the type of content and comments that are on the site.

Last year YouTube had issues with its advertising when ads appeared next to videos that advertisers deemed inappropriate like extremist videos. Mars, Cadbury and other companies pulled or suspended their advertising with the company back in March after obscene comments appeared on the videos they were advertising on. The United Kingdom's government also pulled ads with YouTube due to concerns that they were appearing next to extremist content.