YouTube demonetized Onision for violating its Creator Responsibility policies off the platform, the company confirmed to Mashable.
Onision, whose real name is Gregory James Jackson, is a controversial YouTuber who has been accused of abuse and grooming by at least six women. In a video uploaded on Tuesday, he bid farewell to the YouTube community following his removal from the YouTube Partner Program. Onision has denied all the accusations made against him.
In a tweet replying to Def Noodles, a commentary creator who covers drama unfolding on the platform, YouTube confirmed that Onision has been “suspended indefinitely” from receiving advertising revenue garnered on the platform.
It’s not the first time Onision claimed to leave YouTube. He pulled a similar stunt last year when he began posting monetized content on OnlyFans.
After careful review, we can confirm this creator’s channels have been suspended from YPP indefinitely for violating our Creator Responsibility policies. More -> https://t.co/hGiJ3jUb3j
— YouTube (@YouTube) January 20, 2021
A YouTube spokesperson further confirmed to Mashable that the removal from the YouTube Partner Program includes Onision’s side channels, UhOhBro and Onision Speaks, as well as his main one. He has a combined 5.3 million subscribers across the three channels. The spokesperson added that if a creator’s off-platform behavior harms YouTube users, the community, its employees, or ecosystem, YouTube “may take action” to protect its community. This specific ban, YouTube said, pertained to “off-platform behavior related to child safety,” which violated the platform’s Creator Responsibility Policy.
According to YouTube, these behaviors are “rare” but can still cause “widespread harm to the YouTube community, and potentially damage the trust among creators, users, and advertisers.”
YouTube didn’t elaborate on a specific instance in which Onision endangered a child off-platform. A majority of the women who accused Onision of abuse were minors when he and his husband, Kai Avaroe, pursued relationships with them. Their then 2-year-old daughter fell out of a second-story window in September 2019, and a police report filed four days later detailed an anonymous email sent to the principal of the school attended by Onision’s two children claiming they had been “in an abusive household for many years.” The report, obtained via public record request, also noted that the local sheriff’s department had received multiple calls from “around the country” about Onision.
Onision is the subject of a recent (and similarly controversial) discovery+ documentary that outlines the allegations and his history of pursuing romantic relationships with his much younger fans, many of whom were teenagers when they met online. YouTube creators and their viewers have been calling on YouTube to deplatform Onision for years. When Chris Hansen began interviewing survivors who accused Onision of grooming and abuse, Onision began posting increasingly disturbing videos of his “breakdown” on his secondary channel OnisionSpeaks. Those videos were monetized, and racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
He was banned from Patreon for alleged doxxing after he posted screenshots of texts between himself and a survivor who spoke out against him. The screenshots included the survivor’s phone number. Twitch banned Onision in January 2020, but quietly unbanned him in October. His OnlyFans and Discord server, where he can directly interact with followers, are still running.
Additional reporting by Amanda Yeo.