Youtube scolds suicide blogger but the money keeps rolling in

AN AMERICAN Youtube star who was heavily criticised for posting a video clip online of a suicide victim in Japan made £71,000 from it, experts believe.

Despite having part of his advertising revenue cut by the website, Logan Paul, a video blogger, or “vlogger”, still pocketed at least $96,000 from a series of Tokyo clips.

However, Youtube has said it would put future projects with him on hold in the wake of the controversy surrounding his filming of a dead body at a notorious suicide hotspot.

Paul, 22, is one of Youtube’s top contributors, drawing millions of views from a mainly young audience.

In the wake of complaints, he has been removed from Google Preferred, a system Youtube uses to package its most popular content for sale to advertisers.

Last week he apologised – in a Youtube video entitled So Sorry – for posting the clip that showed him and his friends laughing about the body they filmed hanging from a tree in Japan’s “suicide forest”, near Mount Fuji. The So Sorry clip has been seen more than 40 million times, which itself will have brought him even more income.

Paul said he had made a “huge mistake” and was ashamed. He deleted the body video – but not before it had gained six million views and netted him thousands of pounds.

A petition calling for his channel to be deleted has been signed by half a million people.

Youtube said this week that “suicide is not a joke”, confirmed the video violated its guidelines and added it was “looking at further consequences”. Paul has not posted any videos in the past week, saying he is “taking time to reflect”.

However, the vlogger continues to make money from his Tokyo Adventures. After deleting the suicide video, he published three other Tokyo videos and will share that revenue with Youtube.