The Vox Adpocalypse Occurred on 5 Jun 2019

This is almost certainly YouTube’s biggest fail of 2019. It started on May 30th when Carlos Maza, a Vox employee, claimed that he was the victim of targeted harassment from Steven Crowder and his followers and asked YouTube to remove Crowder’s channel.

On May 31, Crowder released a video which warned that Vox is trying to have his content censored. On June 4, KEEMSTAR warned that Maza was trying to start another Adpocalypse over “hurt feelings.” Later on June 4, YouTube tweeted that none of Crowder’s content violated their policies.

In a remotely sane world, this controversy would have ended there. However, after Maza threw another tantrum, YouTube decided to appease him by demonetizing dozens of channels (Crowder’s in particular).

For any who missed it: Yesterday, Vox, a multi-million dollar corporation succeeded in stripping independent YouTube creators of their livelihood… journalists, educators, podcasts… And they want us all to forget and go on as usual.

We won’t. #VoxAdpocalypse

– Steven Crowder (@scrowder) 6 Jun 2019

Shockingly, YouTube couldn’t even do this correctly. The blanket demonetization was so poorly executed that channels having nothing to do with politics or “hate speech” were caught up in the whole fiasco.

This guy made videos of relaxing sounds, like being at the beach on a rainy day, now Youtube has stripped his monetization.

#VoxAdpocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67sgqvDM5bw

– Tim Pool (@Timcast) 7 Jun 2019

The best is that none of this was enough for Maza. When the dust settled, YouTube had:

1. failed to demonetize the appropriate channels.
2. failed to appease Carlos Maza.
3. failed to actually hurt Crowder financially because this controversy actually caused more people to join MugClub in a single weekend than had joined over the company’s history.

In fact, five days later, Crowder comically named Maza employee of the month for “moving more MugClub memberships than anyone in the history of the company.” Crowder’s channel was re-monetized a little over a year later.