Russell Brand demonetized on YouTube moral dilemma as video streaming giant announces comedian will no longer be allowed to monetize on ads as questions are raised amid concerted effort to dismantle provocateur and agitator of corporate narrative amid sexual assault allegations. Trial by media and social media and not by jury.
Whatever happened to due process? Whatever happened to presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
Social media giant, YouTube on Tuesday announced that UK comedian and polarising figure, Russell Brown will no longer make money from the video streaming giant after several women made allegations of sexual assault against the comedian/social media influencer/provocateur.
YouTube said monetization of Brand’s account, which has 6.62 million subscribers, has been suspended ‘following serious allegations against the creator.’
Russell Brand has not been criminally charged, yet YouTube has demonitized his accounts based off of these allegations. Insanity. If the slope wasn’t slippery before, it sure is now. https://t.co/SJPunJyNQY
— Amanda (@HootyMcBoob69) September 19, 2023
Protect who exactly?
‘This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand,’ the Google-owned video service stated according to the BBC.
YouTube stated it was blocking ad revenue for Brand as a means to ‘to protect’ its users. ‘If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action,’ a YouTube spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Define protect? And whom exactly? And from what?
The suspension means Brand won’t be able to earn money from the ads that run within and alongside YouTube videos (believed to be circa $1 million annually) which include titles such as, ‘What REALLY Started the Hawaii Fires?’ and ‘Covid Tsar Admits Lockdowns Were NEVER About Science.’
Other channels associated with Brand’s main YouTube page include Awakening With Russell, which has 426,000 subscribers, Football Is Nice, which has some 20,000 subscribers, and Stay Free With Russell Brand, which has 22,200 subscribers.
Brand still has a presence on Rumble, a video site popular with some conservatives and far-right groups, where his channel has 1.4 million followers.
He also has 11.2 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, and 3.8 million on Instagram.
RE: Russell Brand.
How as a company i.e. YouTube/Netflix and the like, can you remove his content based on ‘accusation’ from media.
It’s investigation by journalists that have targeted him and done some pretty deep historical digging.
Do we really want to live in a world where…
— Michaelangelo (@michaelanglo90) September 19, 2023
Russell Brand demonetized on YouTube
Brand, 48, denies allegations of sexual assault made by four women in a Channel 4 television documentary and The Times and Sunday Times newspapers.
Asked Brand over the weekend, ‘Is there another agenda at play?’
The accusers, who have not been named, include one who said she was sexually assaulted during a relationship with him when she was 16. Another woman says Brand raped her in Los Angeles in 2012.
The four allegations date from between 2006 and 2013. London’s Metropolitan Police force said that since those claims were made public, it has received a report of a separate sexual assault dating from 2003.
Known for his unbridled and risqué standup routines, Brand was a major U.K. star in the early 2000s.
He hosted shows on radio and television, wrote memoirs charting his battles with drugs and alcohol addiction, appeared in several Hollywood movies and was briefly married to pop star Katy Perry between 2010 and 2012.
Going against the narrative?
In recent years Brand has largely disappeared from mainstream media, from which he rose to prominence to build a large following online challenging mainstream precepts and narratives, particularly during COVID in which much debate existed on the efficacy of vaccines, lockdowns, unbridled pharmaceutical profits and government control of individual movements.
In his rush to challenge ‘narratives’ and foster community with detractors, Brand featured a bevy of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, some alleged episodes of vaccine misinformation along with interviews with controversial broadcasters, including Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan – who have also endured their own scandal and ouster and re-invention as they challenged corporate dogma and played up to their outside the mainstream fan-base.
Along with being a popular outspoken figure on social media with vast reach, Brand has continued to tour as a comedian, performing to hundreds of people in a London venue on Saturday.
The comediane had been due to perform on Tuesday in Windsor, west of London, but promoters said the rest of the tour was being postponed following the allegations.
Brand also has been dropped by his talent agency and a publisher since the allegations became public.
Let me get this right, @YouTube demonetized #RussellBrand with absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing. Is the innocent till proven guilty or not?
— Nelly (@BigNellyNelson) September 19, 2023
Ethical questions
Ellie Tomsett, senior lecturer in media and communications at Birmingham City University, said it was too soon to tell whether the claims would end Brand’s comedy career.
‘I think there’s definitely a market for ‘outsider’ comedians … or people who want to position themselves as some way or alternative to current understandings of gender equality,’ she said.
‘And so I think in the longer term, will it impact his career in the way that we may be expect it to? Possibly not.’
Underscoring the rush out the exit doors on brand, ‘Russell Brand,’ are ethical questions, shouldn’t an individual be able to face their accusers in a court of law and what how was it for the longest time Russell Brand was able to exist within the corridors of influence, until suddenly a seemingly propped coordinated campaign knocked him off. Born and raised by the corporate media who legitimized him, buried and thrown to the scowls of public opinion and hearsay and damned by the corporate media he dared challenge… whatever happened to due process and what does this mean for society and the rest of us who do not have the resources and fanbase available to Brand to fight off allegations which have yet to be proven in a court of law or without a single shred of verified evidence?
Or to put it succinctly, why should YouTube or Channel 4 determine someone’s guilt?
