LOS ANGELES: YouTube has temporarily pulled advertising from Shane Dawson’s channels, coming just days after the creator apologised for past videos in which he appeared in blackface and used the N-word, as well as for videos joking about paedophilia.

According to YouTube, the video platform has suspended monetisation on Shane Dawson’s three YouTube channels: his primary Shane channel; Shane Dawson TV; and beauty channel Shane Glossin’.

YouTube’s review of Dawson’s channels determined that in totality, the nature of his previous videos - along with his behaviour off-YouTube - warranted action. YouTube says that even if a creator’s recent content does not violate community or advertising guidelines, when the site’s enforcement team becomes aware of older or previously uploaded violative content it takes action against a channel. It’s not clear how long Dawson will be suspended from YouTube’s advertising programme.

YouTube’s demonetization of Dawson's channels were first reported by Tubefilter.

YouTube has penalised other creators in a similar way for infractions. In early 2018, it demonetised Logan Paul, after he posted a video showing a person who died from a suicide and then one in which he fired a Taser at a dead rat. YouTube started restoring ads to Logan Paul’s channels after two weeks.

Dawson, in a 20-minute video posted June 26 on his main YouTube channel titled “Taking Accountability”, apologised for appearing in blackface in videos early in his YouTube career among other offensive content, including racist portrayals of Asian and Hispanic people. He has deleted the older videos from Shane Dawson TV, the channel he started in 2008.

“Blackface was something that I did a lot... on my channel. And there’s no excuse for it. There’s literally no excuse. I made a video six years ago talking about it and I gave excuses and it was wrong... But I didn’t do the work,” Dawson said in the video. “I didn’t actually look into the history of it and why it’s so wrong and why people were so upset.”

Dawson also addressed past jokes he made about paedophilia, saying that he “would never talk about a child in a way that is inappropriate”. He apologised to makeup YouTuber James Charles (but Dawson denied he was responsible for last year’s drama involving Charles and fellow beauty guru Tati Westbrook).

Jada Pinkett Smith and Jaden Smith both called out Dawson on Twitter after he posted his apology video as one of his previous videos, which had surfaced on Twitter, showed him performing an offensive act with a poster of then 11-year-old Willow Smith.

 - Reuters