YouTube suspends monetisation of Russell Brand channel amid assault allegations
YouTube has suspended the of monetisation of Russell Brand's channel, where he boasts 6.6 million subscribers, because of the allegations made against the comedian.
In a statement, YouTube said: “We have suspended monetisation on Russell Brand’s channel for violating our Creator Responsibility policy. If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.”
The company said that it had suspended Brand’s channel from the YouTube Partner Program “following serious allegations against the creator. This action means the channel is no longer able to monetise on YouTube”. The decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by the 48-year-old, it added.
READ MORE:Pat Kenny recalls interviewing Russell Brand on RTE Late Late Show - 'He was a loose cannon'
Other channels associated with his main YouTube page include Football Is Nice, which has some 20,000 subscribers, Awakening With Russell, which has 426,000 subscribers, and Stay Free With Russell Brand, which has 22,200 subscribers.
Jonathan Ross gets new radio show 15 years after scandal took him off air
YouTube added that suspending a creator from the YouTube Partner Programme means they are “prohibited from using a new or alternate channel to circumvent our enforcement decision”.
Russell denied the allegations on his YouTube channel (PA)Brand still has a presence on video platform Rumble, where his channel has 1.4 million followers and he hosts a weekly live show at 5pm BST, but there was no new episode on Monday.
His most recent video on Rumble is the short clip from Friday when he denied the allegations against him which were published the following day. The Rumble channel description reads: “Everybody knows that the old ideas won’t help us. Religion is dead. Capitalism is dead. Communism is dead. Where will the answers of the next century lie? Particularly, when we’re facing a mental health epidemic and ecological meltdown.”
The Hollywood actor, 48, has been accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame working for the BBC, Channel 4 and starring in Hollywood films. The Met said they have now received an allegation of sexual assault in Soho, central London, in 2003.
During the explosive Channel 4 Dispatches documentary Russell Brand: In Plain Sight , which was made in conjunction with The Times and Sunday Times, Brand, 48, was accused of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse - which the comedian strongly denies.
In recent years the former TV and radio personality has re-positioned himself, posting regular videos about spirituality and politics to his millions of followers. His YouTube channel includes coverage of news stories, including alleged misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and being an outspoken sceptic of the vaccine.
Last year, one of his videos was taken down on YouTube over the site’s policy on Covid-19 disinformation, which prompted Brand to move his channel to Rumble.
On his YouTube channel, Brand said: "One from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks, as well as some pretty stupid stuff like community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn't be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel.
"But amidst this litany of astonishing rather baroque attacks, often very serious allegations that I absolutely refute. These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies. And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.
"Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that. Then almost too transparent, and I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question, is there another agenda at play? Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before, like with Joe Rogan, when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of, and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language.
Katy Perry's stormy love life - heartbreak, divorce to Hollywood ending
"I'm aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, watch out, Russell. They're coming from you. You're getting too close to the truth. Russell Brand did not kill himself. I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles. Russell Brand’s a conspiracy theorist, Russell Brand’s right wing. I'm aware of news media making phone calls, sending letters to people I know for ages and ages. It's being clear to me, or at least it feels to me like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kinds of voices. And I mean, my voice along with your voice.
"I don't mind them using my books and my standout to talk about my promiscuous consensual conduct in the past. What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations. Also, it's worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently, in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack."
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
