Russell Brand Faces Disciplinary Action From YouTube For Violating Their ‘Responsibility Policy’

Actor Russell Brand is not going to be able to make any more money through his YouTube channel after the platform accused him of violating its “responsibility policy.”

The 48-year-old content creator usually makes around five videos a week for his 6.6 million subscribers; however, it looks like he will not be able to earn any more money off of his videos due to the allegations against him.

Russell Brand’s videos talk about everything from conspiracy theories to the Ukraine War, to climate change, to the pandemic. In many of these videos, he alleges that headline-making news items are really a distraction from what is “really” going on in the world.

According to the Daily Mail, the actor made an estimated £1 million a year from his YouTube videos; however, that has now stopped in light of the accusations against him. Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse in a few separate allegations ranging from 2006 to 2013.

During that time, he was starring in Hollywood blockbusters and working for the BBC and Channel 4. Brand has maintained that all of the encounters were consensual and strongly denied the allegations against him.

A YouTube spokesperson told Deadline that they were suspending ads on his channel and denying him “monetization” because he violator the company’s “creator responsibility policy.” A spokesperson said, “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.”

Although his videos will remain up, he will not be able to make any money off of them.

On Monday, the Met police reported that they had received other allegations against the actor as more women came forward to share their stories. As per the Daily Mail, law enforcement officials released a statement saying, “On Sunday, September 17, the Met received a report of a sexual assault which was alleged to have taken place in Soho in central London in 2003. Officers are in contact with the woman and will be providing her with support.”

“We first spoke with The Sunday Times on Saturday, September 16, and have since made further approaches to The Sunday Times and Channel 4 to ensure that anyone who believes they have been the victim of a sexual offense is aware of how to report this to the police,” they continued, noting that the woman who spoke with police did not speak to The Sunday Times.

In a video captioned “This is happening,” the “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” actor vehemently denied the allegations that he was facing. He spoke to the “very serious” criminal allegations against him but expressed shock at the “astonishing” and “rather baroque attacks” on his character.

“The relationships that I had were absolutely always consensual,” Brand said in comments transcribed by Deadline. “I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent. And I’m being transparent about it now.”

He said that his ability to speak his mind was being “metastasized into something criminal” and that there was a “serious and concerted agenda” to silence him due to the controversial nature of his YouTube videos.

“It’s been clear to me, or at least it feels to me, like there’s a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices,” he said. “I don’t mind them using my books and my stand-up to talk about my promiscuous consensual conduct in the past. What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.”

The actor also claimed that he has witnesses with evidence that “directly contradicts the narrative that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct,” calling out Channel 4 and The Times newspaper.

The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk, was one of the first to come to Brand’s defense, tweeting, “Of course. They don’t like competition” in the comments on his video. Other fans were quick to come to his defense, with Marauder Magazine sharing a quote from Plato, which read, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.”