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Popular Canadian YouTube channel NELK has been suspended from the YouTube Partner Program due to a violation of COVID-19 social distancing guidelines.
NELK, also referred to as NELK Boys, is a channel known for their vlogs and prank videos. It primarily comprises of Kyle Forgeard, Jesse Sebastiani and Steve Deleonardis. The channel has 5.7 million subscribers on YouTube and is often known to get embroiled in controversies due to the problematic behavior of its members and the nature of their pranks.
Recently, NELK was in the news for staging a gym protest online and if that was not enough, they are currently being investigated by authorities for throwing parties in the midst of a pandemic.
Their most recent visit to Illinois State University has landed them in hot water as hundreds of people can be spotted crammed together in a clear violation of strict social-distancing measures:
As a consequence, YouTube has now demonetized their channel in what is now being deemed an authoritarian move as they replied with the following tweet:
Is YouTube ushering in an age of authoritarianism?
In light of YouTube's recent decision, popular YouTuber Optimus spoke out against this new problematic trend of censorship, where YouTube recently seems to have assumed a dictatorial control over content creators.
From handing out a slew of bans to channel strikes, akin to a LeafyIsHere or a Penguinz0, YouTube has been on an authoritarian spree of late. Keeping this in mind, Optimus states:
"YouTube they've been making some very odd decisions recently , they've been making a lot of worrying decisions in recent months. We've had demonetization, we've seen copyright trolls , we've seen YouTube's inadequacy to respond to content creators ...Now we literally have YouTube going completely rogue and becoming almost authoritarian and I think this is a very scary concept."
He then goes on to state that while he condemns such kind of irresponsible behavior on the part of the NELK Boys, YouTube has no right to police creators for their actions off the platform.
He then proceeds to attack YouTube's double standards and hypocritical approach:
"YouTube is more or less doing this like a PR stunt I say. They're not doing something minor, they're taking away someone's income source because they did something YouTube disagreed with off the platform.
"People who do absolutely nothing wrong get hit with their stupid shit all the time . We now have a multi-billion dollar conglomerate owned by Google basically telling people what they can and can't do outside of their time on their platform.
"This draconian policy basically allows them to destroy content creators in any way they want. They honestly go for things that are non issues but when there are actual issues , they are silent as f*****g day."
He then provides the example of Jake Paul's recent troublesome behavior, where he was criticized for holding similar parties and also had his house raided by the FBI. He follows it up by mentioning a proven animal abuser, Peluchin Entertainment, who is still allowed to exist on YouTube.
Keeping this in mind, he ends by saying:
"Why do you guys react only to certain circumstances? YouTube needs to stay in their own lane and shut up."
As the news regarding the NELK channel being demonetized went viral, several took to Twitter to express their views:
