YouTube Tweets ‘Open Letter’ In Response To Logan Paul Video: ‘Suicide is Not a Joke’

YouTube is finally commenting on Logan Paul‘s controversial video released last month.

On New Year’s Eve, social media celebrity Logan Paul uploaded a vlog to his popular YouTube channel containing the recently-deceased corpse of a man who had committed suicide by hanging in the “suicide forest” in Japan.

The video received intense backlash and was quickly taken down. It’s been over a week since the video was removed from the site and YouTube is finally releasing their statement saying, “suicide is not a joke:”

An open letter to our community:

Many of you have been frustrated with our lack of communication recently. You’re right to be. You deserve to know what’s going on.

— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018

Like many others, we were upset by the video that was shared last week.

— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018

Suicide is not a joke, nor should it ever be a driving force for views. As Anna Akana put it perfectly: “That body was a person someone loved. You do not walk into a suicide forest with a camera and claim mental health awareness.”

— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018

We expect more of the creators who build their community on @YouTube, as we’re sure you do too. The channel violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences.

— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018

It’s taken us a long time to respond, but we’ve been listening to everything you’ve been saying. We know that the actions of one creator can affect the entire community, so we’ll have more to share soon on steps we’re taking to ensure a video like this is never circulated again.

— YouTube (@YouTube) January 9, 2018

Paul has since apologized for the video, saying “I don’t expect to be forgiven.”

[Image via screengrab]

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