YouTube Suspends Ads on Shane Dawson’s Channels After His Apology for Racist Videos

Todd Spangler
·3 min read

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YouTube has temporarily pulled advertising from Shane Dawson’s channels, coming just days after the creator apologized for past videos in which he appeared in blackface and used the N-word, as well as for videos joking about pedophilia.

According to YouTube, the video platform has suspended monetization on Shane Dawson’s three YouTube channels: his primary Shane channel; Shane Dawson TV; and beauty channel Shane Glossin’.

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YouTube’s review of Dawson’s channels determined that in totality, the nature of his previous videos — along with his behavior off-YouTube — warranted action. YouTube says that even if a creator’s recent content does not violate community or advertising guidelines, when the site’s enforcement team becomes aware of older or previously uploaded violative content it takes action against a channel. It’s not clear how long Dawson will be suspended from YouTube’s advertising program.

YouTube’s demonetization of Dawson’s channels were first reported by Tubefilter. Since his June 26 apology video, his main channel has lost 600,000 subscribers (dropping to 22.5 million currently).

YouTube has penalized other creators in a similar way for infractions. In early 2018, it demonetized Logan Paul, after he posted a video showing a person who died from a suicide and then one in which he fired a Taser at a dead rat. YouTube started restoring ads to Logan Paul’s channels after two weeks.

Dawson, in a 20-minute video posted last Friday evening on his main YouTube channel titled “Taking Accountability,” apologized for appearing in blackface in videos early in his YouTube career among other offensive content, including racist portrayals of Asian and Hispanic people. He has deleted the older videos from Shane Dawson TV, the channel he started in 2008.

“Blackface was something that I did a lot… on my channel. And there’s no excuse for it. There’s literally no excuse. I made a video six years ago talking about it and I gave excuses and it was wrong… But I didn’t do the work,” Dawson said in the video. “I didn’t actually look into the history of it and why it’s so wrong and why people were so upset.”

Dawson also addressed past jokes he made about pedophilia, saying that he “would never talk about a child in a way that is inappropriate.” He apologized to makeup YouTuber James Charles (but Dawson denied he was responsible for last year’s drama involving Charles and fellow beauty guru Tati Westbrook).

Jada Pinkett Smith and Jaden Smith both called out Dawson on Twitter after he posted his apology video. In one of his previous videos, which had surfaced on Twitter, Dawson pretended to masturbate to a poster of Willow Smith.

“SHANE DAWSON I AM DISGUSTED BY YOU,” Jaden Smith tweeted. “YOU SEXUALIZING AN 11 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY SISTER!!!!!! IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM FUNNY AND NOT OKAY IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT.”

Ellise Shafer contributed to this report.

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