YouTube Deletes Austin Jones Account
In June 2017, popular YouTuber Austin Jones was arrested amid allegation of soliciting his fans for pornographic images of themselves. Shooting to fame with his acapella singing channel, at the time of the arrest he had roughly 530,000 YouTube subscribers. A pretty substantial amount by any usual remit. Given his youthful looks (aged 24), he had a pretty substantial amount of young girls as his followers.
Things did, however, take a darker turn when it was revealed that the fans he had been soliciting for both images and videos were underage. In other words, he was actively encouraging (and succeeding) in getting minors to send him explicit images.
Social Media
At the first instance of the arrest, practically all social media outlets abandoned him with one notable exception. YouTube had, bizarrely, chosen to keep his account active even as recent as at the end of January. Following his court appearance on February 1st, Austin Jones pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images of children.
You can look more into the details via the report via the BBC if you wish. The further down the rabbit hole you go, however, reveals just what an odious creature he is.
YouTube U-Turn
Despite YouTube deciding not to delete his channel until yesterday, it should be noted that he was demonetised as soon as the arrest was confirmed back in 2017. It is, however, causing criticism against the website for maintaining their hosting of his videos. I daresay, however, that YouTube may have been operating under the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ method. Well, either that or they were personally trying to cash in on the boost to his notoriety.
Just to bring you up to date with the story, prosecutors in the US pushed hard for him to be sent immediately to jail. The court, however, decided to release him for ‘psychiatric evaluation’ before his sentencing in May.
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