On April 3, 2017, Joe Simpson of HEATSTREET wrote an article explaining the recent controversy surrounding the Wall Street Journal and Ethan Klein of the popular YouTube channel H3H3. On March 31, Klein released a video lambasting the paper for shedding light on the fact that certain brands were pulling support from YouTube after discovering that their ads were playing alongside content they deemed inappropriate.
The WSJ article created a snowball effect that spurred many more brands to stop running ads on the site, costing YouTube up to $750 million in revenue, hurting Klein and other “YouTubers” whose entire livelihood revolves around the site. Klein goes on in the video, claiming that WSJ reporter Hack Nicas falsified certain screenshots used in the article.
In the video, which Klein now removed, he argues that it’s likely impossible for advertisements to have been shown because of revenue charts from the channel owner of the objectionable video. In short, Klein asserted, if there were advertisements playing before the video the channel owner would still be receiving money. Klein also argued that having a racist word or phrase in a video title would automatically lead to YouTube pulling advertisements, and that Nicas’s screenshots, seen below, would show different view counts.
However, evidence quickly surfaced rebuking Klein’s claim. Users on Reddit pointed out that one of the videos in question had a been tagged by YouTube’s content ID system, meaning the video received advertisements through a different method. Further, YouTube view counts don’t always update immediately, meaning Nicas refreshed the page and saw a different ad without a view registering.
Klein uploaded a new video saying that this evidence “threw too much doubt into my theory.” In the future, Klein promised to be “more thorough” in his investigations.