Ethical Issues on YouTube: Discursive Essay

Was it ethical for Youtube to cancel Felix Kjellberg’s (Pewdiepie) original series and de-monetize certain videos on his channel following Anti-Semitic content posted on his channel in 2017? On one hand, it was ethical because Felix Kjellberg violated YouTube’s policies that are meant to protect advertisers from their ads appearing on offensive content. Also, Youtube responded to hate speech on its platform and made action to protect its community from offensive content. Lastly, it was ethical because Youtube did not fully remove Felix Kjellberg and responded to the videos that were deemed offensive on a case-by-case basis.

On the other hand, it was unethical because Kjellberg claims that the videos in question contained Anti-Semitic content. Also, YouTube inconsistently applies its rules regarding hate speech. Lastly, the penalty for his conduct was insufficient. Ultimately, I have decided that it was ethical for YouTube to peruse its consequences against Kjellberg, and I will use the potter box to argue this case.

The potter box first states that we look at the primary facts of the challenge. In this case, the primary facts are as follows. In February of 2017, Youtube canceled an extremely popular Youtuber’s original series titled “Scare Pewdiepie). Youtube also removed several videos from Kjellberg’s Youtube channel.

To dive deeper into the ethical challenge, it is important to speak about the secondary facts that are involved. On February 11th, 2017, Felix Kjellberg uploaded a video on Youtube that included Kjellberg reacting to different things on the internet. During the video, a banner is held up by two men that states “Death to all Jews”. On February 14th, 2017, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled 'Disney Severs Ties With YouTube Star PewDiePie After Anti-Semitic Posts”. In this article Kjellberg’s brush-ups with other racist and anti-sematic content were discussed, bringing light to the controversy. Shortly after Youtube removed three of nine videos that were deemed to be offensive and demonetized the other six videos. Youtube also announced that it would not be releasing the second season of the popular Youtube Original Series “Scare Pewdiepie”. Youtube maintained that Kjellberg would be able to monetize its videos and remain on Youtube. Since Youtube’s punishment for Kjellberg, his channel had only grown in subscribers and he has become the most subscribed person on Youtube.

When it comes to my first ethical rationale that Pewdiepie violated Youtube’s policies that are meant to protect advertisers from their ads appearing on offensive content, Youtube stated that Kjellberg did in fact break this policy but did not give an exact explanation or reasoning or the specific policy that Kjellberg broke. My next rationale involved Youtube taking responsibility for the content on its platform and responding to hate speech to protect its community from offensive content. When analyzing the facts, Youtube did take steps to review each of the videos that were flagged as offensive content. Youtube removed three of the most offensive videos, including the video that had the two men holding the banner that contained hate speech. My last ethical rationale stated that Youtube did not fully remove Kjellberg from its platform and responded on a case-by-case basis on what to remove or demonetize. Through research, it is true that Youtube did not remove Kjellberg from its platform and furthermore did not remove Kjellberg’s ability to make money from past and future videos. I found that each of these ethical rationales can be proven to be ethical.

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When it comes to my unethical rationales, the first discusses that the video in question contained no anti-sematic content. This is a claim by Kjellberg, who stated that the purpose of the video was to show the “crazy” things that can be done through the internet. Kjellberg admits to paying the two men through an application called Fivver, to hold up the sign in the video. Although Kjellberg states that this particular instance is taken out of context, it is clear that the video contained Anti Semitic content and is therefore ethical for Youtube to respond in kind. My next unethical rationale deals with the fact that Youtube inconsistently applies its rules regarding hate speech. When looking into Youtube’s history with hate speech, Youtube in 2018 tried to crack down on hate speech by demonetizing any videos that broached sensitive subjects. This led to censorship accusations and Youtube has relaxed some of its crackdowns on sensitive matters on its platform. This being said there was no concrete evidence that Youtube has inconsistently applied its practices regarding hate speech. Videos that are deemed hate speech are typically either demonetized or taken off of the website. This points to a consistent application of punishment for hate speech and points to ethics for Youtube to take the actions that it did. My last unethical rationale was that the penalty for Kjellberg’s conduct was insufficient. Through researching the topic I found that although his original series was canceled and the videos in question were demonetized, Kjellberg has only grown in subscribers and has continued to stir up controversy with other hate speech and racist rhetoric in his recent videos. It seems that the penalty for his previous conduct was not harsh enough to deter more negative behavior by Kjellberg. At the end of step one, I maintained that it was ethical for Youtube to take the action that it did against Kjellberg.

Considering step two of the potter box, I will state the values that I hold dear and how they relate to this challenge and help in determining whether Youtube’s actions were ethical or not. The three values that I choose were responsibility, Impact, and sensitivity. Responsibility comes into play with the responsibilities of Kjellberg as a Youtuber to create the advertisement and viewer-friendly content. As well As Youtube’s responsibility in policing the content of its YouTubers. When thinking of this value I lean more in terms of the challenge of being ethical because it is both Kjellberg’s responsibility to not spread hate speech using his platform and the responsibility of Youtube to stick to its policies regarding hate speech and follow the procedures when one of its YouTubers violate that policy. The next value is impacted. This comes into play when thinking about the impact that Felix has on his largely young audience who is influenced by viewing his content. In recent days it has been reported that “subscribe to Pewdiepie” has been engraved into different Holocaust memorials. This gives the idea that Kjellberg’s mostly young followers can be easily impacted and can continue to perpetuate negative behavior in response to his. My last value is Sensitivity. This comes into play when thinking about the level of sensitivity Kjellberg should have when creating the content for his own channel. The main video in question, although framed as a way to show the “craziness” of the internet, still was insensitive to the viewers of his video. At the end of step two and evaluating my values, I find that I maintain my case that Youtube was ethical in its actions taken against Kjellberg.

The third step of the potter box it focuses on using a moral theory to determine if the challenge is ethical or unethical. For this specific challenge, I choose to use Kant’s Categorical Imperative to analyze the ethical or unethical news of Youtube’s actions. The main focus of this theory is on actions. One of the main points of this theory is that there are actions that are always wrong such as cheating or stealing. Kant calls these universal Laws and focuses on the actions taken by people that align with these universal laws. “In deliberating, we act according to a law we ourselves dictate, not according to the dictates of passion or impulse.” (Sparknotes, pg.1) To apply this to the challenge means to look at what the universal law is and whether or not Kjellberg violated that law. The proposed universal law is not to use hate speech, this is backed up by Youtube policies against hate speech. Which leans this principle toward Youtube being ethical for its actions against Kjellberg’s videos containing hate speech. Another key concept of Kant’s Categorical Imperative is the idea that this set of ethics should apply to everyone and not a select number of people. When applying it to this challenge we see that Youtube should be applying its laws against hate speech to all on its platform and not a select few. Youtube, although coming under fire for censorship has applied its policies against hate speech evenly across its platform. Finally, a key component of Kant’s Categorical Imperative is that actions should be taken because it is the right thing to do rather than doing them because they achieve a certain goal. Here when applying this idea to the challenge it can be argued that Youtube took action against Kjellberg, not just because it was the right thing to do but because not taking the action would negatively impact the company. Here it leans towards unethical for Youtube to take the actions it did. At the end of step three, I maintain that Youtube was ethical for canceling Kjellberg’s original series and removing or demonetizing his videos that were under fire.

For the last step of the potter box, I analyzed the loyalties that I have to different stakeholders involved in the situation. The first of my stakeholders are the subscribers of Kjellberg. The subscribers of Kjellberg were impacted because the youtube personality that they followed, had videos removed and his series was canceled. The subscribers were also impacted because of the content found in Kjellberg’s video. In the end, I lean towards ethical on Youtube’s part to protect Kjellberg’s young viewers from inappropriate content. My next set of stakeholders is youtube creators. They are impacted by this because Youtube is setting a precedent on how to deal with hate speech on their platform. And lastly, for my last set of stakeholders, I choose Youtube. Youtube is affected because of its responsibility to maintain a platform that does not include hate speech. Youtube’s business is threatened when attention is drawn to negative videos on its platform. At the end of step four, I maintained that Youtube was in fact ethical for its actions against Kjellberg

After using the potter box to help in determining whether or not Youtube was ethical for canceling Kjellberg’s Original series and removing or demonetizing certain videos under question, I came to the conclusion that it was ethical. For step one I analyzed the facts and came to the conclusion that based on the primary and secondary facts Kjellberg did, in fact, have anti-Semite content in his videos which breaks Youtube policy. During step two I discussed my values which were responsibility, impact, and sensitivity, these all heavily leaned towards Youtube being ethical for its actions. In step three I took a dive into Kant’s Categorical Imperative to help answer the ethical question. Although some principles leaned toward being neutral, Ultimately Youtube's actions being ethical won out. Finally, I addressed loyalties to stakeholders in the last step of the potter box which also leaned towards ethical for Youtube’s actions against Kjellberg.