Logan Paul and the elusive quest to build a free-speech platform that's not a cesspool
Logan Paul hasn't posted a new YouTube video in over six months. His last two uploads were titled "I'm Fighting Floyd Mayweather This Week" and "My Last Words To Floyd Mayweather." Then, silence. If you didn't know better, you'd think he died in the ring.
What else but a fatal boxing incident, after all, could have led one of the most famous YouTubers in the world — a controversial but charismatic web presence who helped shape the template for modern e-celebrity — to leave his 23.2 million subscribers on radio silence for half a year and counting?
"Demonetization; being blacklisted; being shadow-banned," says Paul, 26, rattling off the different ways YouTube and other mainstream social networks have alienated him. "It's really demotivating when you are yourself, and the platform that you're on — because of the advertisers, because of public sentiment, whatever it is — no longer wants to support you."
In search of a corner of the internet where he can be his full, unfiltered self, Paul has traded in YouTube for , the company that runs the back-end tech
