Thread by @Timayenis

PewDiePie VS ADL
Thread 🧵:

In September 2019, PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) announced that he would donate $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) during a video that celebrated his achievement of reaching 100 million subscribers on YouTube. He was the first person to reach this number.

Many PewDiePie fans were surprised and confused by his decision to donate to the ADL because in 2017, when he lost partnerships with Disney and Youtube due to some “Anti-semitic jokes”, the ADL thanked them for their decision.

The comment section was highly critical of his decision, and he was getting an unusually high dislike count from his fans who knew about the Anti-Defamation League and its role in the censorship on Youtube and on other platforms, as well as the sinister story of its founding.

After some hours, many users found that their comments about the issue were hidden or deleted. Then a massive number of users copied and pasted a text that said “the ADL is blackmailing PewDiePie and deleting comments” and filled the whole comment section with it.

The same thing was happening in PewDiePie’s subreddit. Many fans felt betrayed by his decision because it was entirely inconsistent with his stance during 2016–17 against censorship on social media and organizations similar to the ADL.

Almost all posts that were critical of PewDiePie’s decision were deleted, and users were banned without any serious explanation. This happened to a massive number of users, the PewDiePie subreddit was one of the biggest on the platform.

It turned out that the censorship was done according to the instructions of a certain moderator, with many questionable posts and opinions that declared that every post that was critical of PewDiePie’s decision was a 4chan attempt to push conspiracy theories.

People were flooding the comments of the ADL to express their disagreement with the situation and created a popular hashtag, #peaceforpewds

PewDiePie put out a statement on Twitter responding to this massive backlash across platforms. He stated that the main reason was the aftermath of the mention of his name by the Christchurch shooter. Some responded positively and some negatively, he later deleted the post.

It is important to mention that previously PewDiePie had mentioned that he was advised to donate to Jewish organizations after the 2017 “Anti-Semitic jokes” controversy with the Wall Street Journal, but he refused.

Some famous people defended his decision, such as Jewish YouTuber Ethan Klein (h3h3Productions), who made a tweet that presented the people who were critical of his donation to the ADL as snowflakes.

After a day, PewDiePie released a video in which he explained the situation and responded to the negative reaction of his fanbase. He stated that he didn’t know a lot of things about the ADL and that, after looking into it, he decided not to proceed with the donation.

He stated that when he planned the collaboration with the company “Honey”, they decided to donate to a charity and he admitted that he made a mistake by choosing the charity that he was advised. One hypothesis is that the Jewish CEO proposed the ADL purely for nepotistic reasons.

After PewDiePie stated that the donation would be cancelled, prominent figures of the far left, such as Hasan Piker, and several Jewish journalists, such as Batya Sargon and Yair Rosenberg, expressed their opposition to his decision.

Was it a genuine mistake? Was it a 4D chess move? It doesn't really matter, through PewDiePie's actions, the problem with the Anti-Defamation League was getting massive attention for the first time in Internet history.

To learn more about the dark history of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) read this thread:

PewDiePie VS ADL - The Redemption Arc