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The Onision Controversy Explained

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4 months ago

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  • Controversial YouTuber Onision has been accused of predatory behavior by multiple women, with many claiming that he groomed them to have sex with him once they turned 18.
  • Many of these girls have spoken out, saying his partner Kai has aided him in this misconduct.
  • Chris Hansen has been speaking to many of the women involved and announced on Wednesday that the FBI is investigating.
  • Onision has denied the allegations and has posted a series of videos where he claims he is retiring but has continued to post online.

Who is Onision?

Controversial YouTuber Onision has been making headlines over the past week for a variety of reasons, including being banned from Patreon and posting videos claiming he is retiring. This follows years of accusations of grooming and predatory behavior.

James Jackson, known on the Internet as Onision and to many others as Greg, has been on YouTube since 2006. He has multiple channels with over one million followers and has been embattled in controversy for much of his time online. 

His now ex-wife Skye appeared in his videos, with some elements of his divorce in 2010 broadcasted online. One of his first major controversies to bleed into the YouTube industry, however, happened in 2012 when he was banned from VidCon. 

An ex-girlfriend of his made remarks that she felt he pressured her into having sex. He addressed these claims in a video and repeatedly referred to the number of people she had slept with and used her derogatory words including the word whore. He insinuated that because of this, she could not be sexually assaulted.

“To be only 26 and to have slept with over 20 people is ridiculous,” Jackson said. “And of course she goes to insinuate that when we did make love, that I was forcing her into it, that I was pressuring her into it and she didn’t really want to. That’s funny coming from someone who has slept with over 20 people.” 

This ended up landing him in hot water with a lot of YouTubers, several of whom posted videos of their own calling these comments slut-shaming. Some also said they believed Jackson was being accused of a serious crime and should not brush that off. Many people spread a petition that was actually a year old at that point, calling for people to unsubscribe from him and to get YouTube to revoke its partnership with him.

Because there was so much backlash and outrage over Jackson’s video, he announced on Facebook that he would not be attending VidCon. He said he received an email from VidCon founder Hank Green saying his presence could create a hostile and unsafe environment.

Accusations Against Jackson and Anderson

More recent controversies surround serious allegations against him. Several girls have claimed that Jackson and his partner Kai Anderson have groomed them from a young age to later be involved in a sexual relationship. The two have denied these allegations. Rogue Rocket reached out to Jackson and his team for comments regarding the accusations. They said that “any involvement regarding interview or questions is $10,000.”

Jackson’s relationship with Anderson began when Anderson was 17. At the time, Anderson went by the name of “Lainey” and identified as a woman. He has since transitioned and identifies as a male. When their relationship began, they would drive across state lines to legally have sexual encounters. They are now married with two kids, and many of the accusations claim that Jackson has used Anderson to lure girls in.

Sarah’s Story

One of the most recent incidents comes from a girl named Sarah. She began talking to Anderson and Jackson online when she was a 13-year-old fan, and was mainly interested in Anderson.

By the time she was 14 and 15, she claims they started texting and sent flirty messages, including a topless photo of her. Sarah says when she was 16, she was going through some personal and family troubles and she ended up moving in with Jackson and Anderson. She lived with them on and off for a couple of years.

Sarah claims that when she first moved in, the relationship was not sexual at all, though there were romantic insinuations like physical contact and cuddling. She added, however, that the relationship became sexual after she turned 18.

Sarah, now 19, did a livestream at the end of August discussing their relationship, which started a big conversation online. She ended up being interviewed by YouTuber Blaire White, who frequently posts about Jackson and the allegations against him.

“It hurts to say this, but I feel like they knew what they were doing,” Sarah said of Jackson and Anderson inviting her to live with them as a teenager in order to later have sex with her when she was of legal age. 

“Yeah. I think anyone watching this probably feels the same,” White responded. “That there’s no reason really to have a teenager move in with you, send the message they sent, and then conveniently and coincidentally be intimate with you after you turn 18.” 

In later interviews, Sarah explicitly said that she felt that she was groomed.

While speaking with White, she added that in the time before she turned 18, Jackson often forced her to act like there was nothing flirty about their relationship. She claimed he told her what to say in a video posted to one of his channels, despite her not wanting to be in it.

“He really pressured me into making it. And I didn’t want to,” she said. “I have bloopers of me literally having a mental breakdown, like sobbing because I was just so overwhelmed.” 

She added that he also would lie about their relationship.

“And also what hurt me a lot was having to watch him say ‘Oh we don’t even hug Sarah, we don’t even do this or that.’ And it’s like, I’m sitting there at 16 watching this like ‘yes you do,’” she told White. 

White also questioned Sarah about an NDA she was allegedly forced to sign. 

“You told me off-camera that you signed an NDA the morning after you were intimate with them for the first time,” White said. 

 “Yeah,” Sarah responded. “He and Kai decided that everyone in their life needed to sign an NDA and I was no exception to that. The NDA was 1000% for me to not do what I’m doing right now.” 

Shiloh’s Story

In September, not long after Sarah told her story, another girl by the name of Shiloh posted to Twitter about her relationship with Jackson. Many knew some details about her story, as they were public and posted on YouTube when they dated in 2011. This series of tweets, however, painted a larger picture.

Shiloh says she first began contacting Jackson when she was a singer in Canada. They would talk on Skype while he was still married to his first wife. She was 17, and Jackson told her about his divorce, adding that he loved her. 

Shiloh claims that he ended up meeting her in a hotel in Pennsylvania after researching that it would be legal for them to have sexual relations there. The first thing he said to her was, “I can’t wait to get you pregnant.”

When the police learned of Jackson’s presence in the hotel with Shiloh, she claims they asked him to leave. According to Shiloh, there were cameras present in the room and they searched for child pornography. Shiloh has since said that the cameras were not recording at the time. 

She says that after this encounter, he began to alienate Shiloh from her mother. He rented an apartment near where she lived and waited until she turned 18. He convinced her to get a tattoo with his name while she was still underage. 

The tweets then turn to discuss alleged incidents of control and manipulation. Shiloh claims he locked her out of a room while she cried and begged for him not to while he masturbated to porn. She also said that she sometimes slept next to his office chair so she could wake up and service him.

She claimed that he shaved her head during sex to degrade her and give her a list of rules to follow. She says she was told to not consume intoxicating substances, wear makeup or bras, have social media accounts without him knowing the password, among other things. 

At one turning point, she claims he filmed a breakdown while she was trying to leave him. She alleges that the police took her to a mental health facility because when he didn’t let her call her mom, she threatened suicide while he was on the phone with the police.

They broke up after this, but he “lured” her back in and let her pick an engagement ring.  She said that their sexual encounters were sometimes so aggressive she was in physical distress. 

Shiloh then says she became pregnant, but the fetus died and did not pass, meaning it was not a full miscarriage. She explained that she was at risk of going septic but he refused to pay for her healthcare. She ended up going back to Canada, where she ended up going into labor. 

He ended up posting a video announcing their break-up and she claims he cast her as a liar. 

While she was in the hospital, Shiloh’s mother hid her passport so she could not return to see him. Jackson gave her $1,100 to get a new one. She says she spent the money elsewhere and got away from him.

Billie’s Story

Another girl named Billie has also come forward with her story. She had posted about some of the toxic elements of their relationship before. In 2017, she tweeted that he wanted to punish her after she smoked marijuana. The punishments included getting a tattoo and chaining herself to a wall. 

She revealed more when speaking with Dateline and To Catch a Predator’s Chris Hansen. Hansen currently has a YouTube presence where he has extensively covered Jackson’s case. He has reached out to speak with Jackson, but Jackson said he would only speak for $350,000.

During her interview, Billie said that the relationship started when Anderson messaged her online. When she was over 18, she was flown out to meet Anderson and Jackson in person and visit them at their home. 

She claimed she was mainly interested in Anderson and had no idea what she was getting into when she visited the first time. Jackson was insistent that he watch the two of them kiss. On their first visit, she says nothing sexual happened, however, this changed when she came back again. 

She also said that she does not think anything illegal happened between her, Anderson, or Jackson, but noted that she felt they were always walking towards the line. Much of the time she visited overlapped with Sarah living there, and Billie did say that she felt something illegal could have happened with Sarah. She did not specify what laws may have been broken. 

Billie said that when the two were there, they would spend time with Jackson and Anderson’s kids and did a lot of “babysitting.”

“But if it was both of us, that’s what we were doing,” she told Hansen. “Babysitting, cleaning, helping cook food, just you know helping with whatever general grocery shopping kind of thing.“

“Did you get paid to do this?” Hansen asked. 

Billie said she was not paid to do this but was paid for social media moderation.

“It sounds like they treated you like the help, and the help was expected to service them sexually,” Hansen said. “Is that fair?”

“Yeah, I feel like the dynamics just really weird,” Billie said.

She also claimed she had to sign contracts like Sarah did, saying she signed between four or five. 

FBI Investigation

Billie’s interview with Hansen ended with Hansen making an announcement. 

“I should let you and our audience know that I did have a conversation with the FBI yesterday. We’re breaking news here,” he said. “And obviously there is evidence that some young women have that could very well be of interest to investigators.” 

He claimed that while Jackson and Anderson were careful when it came to their physical sexual relationships, there could be cases of transmission of child pornography. In a previous interview with YouTuber Daniel Sulzbach, also known by Repzion, Sulzbach said that there could be many cases of this. 

Sulzbach claimed that Jackson had deleted online forums after Hansen started talking about him online, likely because young girls were posting photos in those forum discussion threads. 

“There’s archived stuff of images of girls from the age of, literally 12, all the way to 16 or 17 years of age and they’re all scantily clad or sometimes just their underwear.” 

On Wednesday, Hansen told his audience that the FBI is investigating.

Recent Scandals and Content

Jackson has seemingly gone unscathed and remains on many of the platforms he has a strong presence on. This changed on November 26 when he was banned from Patreon for doxxing. 

He tweeted a screenshot of texts he said he sent to Billie, but included her phone number. The tweet was removed within an hour of it being posted, and Patreon considered this to be doxxing, which is a violation of their policy. 

“Yes, we removed Onision from Patreon as he violated our Bullying and Harassment as it relates to doxing,” they said in a statement to The Verge. 

Jackson responded to the news of his ban in a meltdown on YouTube that day, then followed with an apology video. On Wednesday he made another video where he announced his retirement, though it appeared to not be serious. 

He continued to post tweets throughout Wednesday, some of which contained sexually explicit language. He also tweeted a link to a new website for his fans. He did a livestream playing video games. 

On Thursday he posted another video called “left” where he packed his bags as though he was leaving. This video also contained meltdowns and appeared to have been made in jest.

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Meghan Rienks’ Channel Hack Highlights YouTube Support Issues

Published

4 weeks ago

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March 4, 2020

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  • For two months, YouTuber Meghan Rienks has been struggling to get YouTube Support’s help to recover her hacked vlog channel.
  • After several confusing email exchanges with the company that presented her with no real solutions, Reinks said she only began to see more helpful and rapid responses when Shane Dawson and Gigi Hadid spoke up or offered their own connections.
  • Rienks said she spoke on the phone with YouTube on Wednesday and learned she may not be able to get her videos back. She also said that she worries about smaller creators who are left with even fewer options when they have issues with their channels.

Rienks Battles with YouTube After Hack

After months of battling with YouTube to regain access to her hacked channel, YouTuber Meghan Rienks said that a call with the company revealed that she may not be able to get her videos back.

On Tuesday, she confirmed via Twitter that YouTube agreed to talk over the phone. The sudden help from the platform came just one day after she posted a 45-minute video detailing the company’s disappointing response to her vlog channel being hacked in January. That call, however, did not go in the direction she was hoping.

She posted on Twitter that the call “wasn’t great.” On a Wednesday night Instagram story, she told her followers that she would likely lose the content she had on the channel, some of which is a decade old.

Her problems with YouTube’s support stem back even further than this phone call. Rienks’ Monday video starts with her explaining that in October, she realized her main channel was not appearing online for viewers, despite it looking fine from her end while logged in. Solving this with YouTube took roughly two weeks. During that time, they had back and forths where they told her nothing was wrong with her channel. 

The company eventually realized they had been looking into her vlog channel instead and had also sent her the wrong link to solve her main channel issues. During this time, she did notice a suspicious upload on her vlog channel but kept that on the back burner so she could focus on her main channel. 

Her vlog channel came back to the forefront on January 2, when Rienks realized it had been fully hacked and rebranded. Her videos were gone, and even though the channel still had her URL, it was now called “Beauty Dior” and has new logos and images.

The page was now full of several newly posted videos, all of which appeared to be re-uploads of beauty tutorials which she suspects are also stolen. On top of that, the email she had associated with the channel was deleted, preventing her from recovering it and regaining control of the account.

Exchanges With YouTube Continue For Two Months

Rienks reached out to YouTube the following morning, thinking this would be an easy fix seeing as the hacking was very obvious. Instead, it led to a series of seemingly empty-worded exchanges between YouTube, Rienks, her manager, and others on her team. In some emails sent from YouTube, Rienks was not even included and had to be kept in the loop via her manager.

In one, the YouTuber support person addresses the email to “Alex.” However, no one involved in these communications is named Alex, or even a name remotely similar to Alex. Rienks stated multiple times that she felt she was not in contact with a real person. 

Substantial news did not come from YouTube until February 22, when YouTube told Meghan they found no signs of abnormal activity on the channel. When she followed up, emphasizing that the channel had been fully rebranded, they maintained their findings in a grammatically messy email. 

“Hi there, thanks for your reply. I understand why you’re wondering that the investigation resulted that no highjacking activity happened on the channel,” they wrote. “However, I can assure you that our internal team carefully investigated this and didn’t found any.” 

They advised that she increase her password and account security, a measure she had actively been taking on all of her channels and social media accounts since the original incident in October.

Rienks Takes to Twitter

The next morning, she emailed them at 9 AM to request a phone call so she could guarantee swift, immediate contact with a real person. She also hopped on Twitter to express her frustrations.

At around the same time she sent her email, she shared YouTube’s response alongside proof that her account had been clearly hacked on Twitter. She also said she had seen a substantial loss in subscribers on the channel since January. 

While those posts gained a decent amount of traction when she uploaded them, they blew up when YouTuber Shane Dawson shared one a little after 2 p.m. Dawson mentioned several YouTube Twitter accounts in his message, which included a plea for help.

Just 45 minutes after Shane sent his tweet out, Rienks saw action from YouTube. She received an email saying that phone support was not an option, but her case was now being marked high priority. She also began direct messaging Team YouTube, which led to more confusing back and forths.

After initially claiming that YouTube had looked into her main channel instead of her vlog, an excuse similar to one give during the first situation in October, Team YouTube they were “not sure why [internal teams] came to that conclusion” that there was no abnormal activity on her vlog. They assured Rienks that she had been in contact with real people at YouTube, and apologized for the delay in solving her problem.

“I am sorry you had to take to twitter to get more help with this,” one of the messages read. “That shouldn’t be the case at all.”

Around the same time, another well-known face slid into Rienks’ DMs –supermodel Gigi Hadid. Hadid, who is a follower of Reinks, told her that she was sorry about her situation, and had a friend at YouTube who could be able to help. 

“This is the only time that I’m getting help,” Rienks said frustratedly in her video. “Is when Shane Dawson and Gigi Hadid help me. Thanks guys.”

On this day, Beauty Dior was still posting content on her channel. She also noted she saw that the account was being sold on a site for $500.

Rienks’ Frustrations with YouTube

While Rienks was recording her video, she got an update from YouTube. 

“The email YouTube just sent is that I can have my channel transferred over to me, I just have to agree to not sue them,” Rienks explained. “And also, I can’t have any of the videos that were privated. Which is all of them.” 

She spoke to her attorney about the email, who said that nothing in their message to her contained a legal document or legally binding clauses. 

“This is a failed system and it’s not working,” she said, explaining her overall anger about YouTube’s response. “And also through all of this I found, if it’s not working for me, it is not working for so many creators who have much smaller channels.” 

In the description of the video, she further expressed that while she wants her channel back, she also wants larger-scale change at YouTube. 

“I want a meeting at Youtube. With REAL HUMANS. With the ‘people’ who run the support team & *personally* investigate hijacked channels,” she wrote. “Because it is a broken system and it needs to be changed. I know this is a long shot, but this has been happening for far too long, to far too many creators.”

“There’s no way that Youtube has coded & built software to pickup on less than 10 seconds of skewed pitch copyrighted song, yet they’re still unable to accurately verify a compromised channel,” she added. “This needs to change.”

When heading to Rienks’ vlog channel today, viewers can still find it as Beauty Dior.

Update: This article was updated from its original form to include new information about Rienks’ phone call with YouTube.

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An Activist Hedge Fund Wants Jack Dorsey Out as Twitter CEO. Could That Change the Site?

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4 weeks ago

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March 3, 2020

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  • Last week, it was reported that conservative activist investor Elliott Management had purchased over $1 billion in Twitter shares, or about 4% of the company.
  • Now, Elliott Management wants to replace Twitter’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, as CEO. 
  • This is largely viewed as an attempt to boost Twitter’s stock, which has been underperforming since Dorsey reclaimed his CEO position in 2015.
  • According to Fox News, a Dorsey ousting by Elliott Management could “raise the prospect that some of the changes to Twitter could make the platform a friendlier place for pro-Trump users.”

Hedge Fund Plans to Push Dorsey Out of Twitter

Twitter employees took to the platform Monday night in support of CEO Jack Dorsey after it was reported that an activist investment fund was trying to unseat him.

Last week, the fund known as Elliott Management announced it had bought roughly $1 billion in Twitter stock. According to Business Insider, that’s nearly 5% of the company and also enough to allow it to pressure Dorsey out of his CEO role. 

Elliot Management wants to oust Dorsey for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most significant reason is that Twitter is underperforming. Dorsey previously served as CEO of Twitter until being fired in 2008. He then returned in 2015. Since then, Twitter’s shares have fallen by 6.2%. Facebook, by contrast, has gained more than 121% in that same timeframe.

In November, Dorsey also announced that he’s preparing to move to Africa for 3-6 months this year.

That’s on top of Dorsey already splitting his time between Twitter and Square, Inc., where Dorsey is also CEO.

Elliott Management’s main argument here will be that a full-time CEO would be able to devote more time to the company to help raise its stock value and grow the company. 

This, however, isn’t the first time someone has announced a plan to oust Dorsey. In fact, such a move seemed bound to happen because unlike Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel, Dorsey does not have voting control of Twitter. 

In December, New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway penned a letter calling for Dorsey’s removal.

“As of 12/6 I am the direct and beneficial owner of approximately 334,000 shares in Twitter,” Galloway said. “To be clear, my primary objective is the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey.”

“Weak governance, a part-time CEO, relocation to Africa, damage to the commonwealth, and poor returns,” he added. “Stakeholders deserve a board and CEO that command the opportunity Twitter occupies.”

Could A Dorsey Oust Make Twitter More “Trump Friendly?”

The reasons why Elliott Management is trying to push Dorsey may not stop there. 

The hedge fund is owned by Paul Singer, a conservative billionaire mega-donor. In 2016, Singer donated $24 million to Republican and right-leaning groups. 

It is possible, as Fox News points out, that Elliot Management’s increased presence within Twitter could, at least in part, ease conservative’s concerns that Twitter has a left-leaning bias. 

Elliott Management’s stake “[raises] the prospect that some of the changes to Twitter could make the platform a friendlier place for pro-Trump users. ”

Last year, California GOP Representative Devin Nunes filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter and several users. In that lawsuit, he accused the platform of “shadow-banning conservatives” and hiding their posts. 

#WeBackJack Trends on Twitter

Following all of this, many Twitter employees supporting Dorsey in his role as CEO posted stories of their interactions with Dorsey using the hashtag #WeBackJack. Later Monday night, that tag began to trend. 

“I’ve worked [for] many major corporations,” one user said. “Never did the CEO take 3 minutes to talk with me 1:1. Jack did (more than 3 mins might I add) & he didn’t treat me like someone below him. Ppl speak highly of him in rooms he’s not in. He’s not pretentious or egocentric. So yea #WeBackJack”

Telsa CEO Elon Musk also offered his support for Dorsey on Twitter Monday night, saying Dorsey “has a good [heart].”

Elliott Management Nominates Four Directors

While Elliott Management has not yet ousted Dorsey, it has nominated four people to Twitter’s board of directors.

Notably, there’s only going to be three seats available at this year’s annual meeting, but Elliott Management reportedly wants to ensure that it nominates enough people to fill all three seats and any vacancies that may unexpectedly arise. 

Elliot Management’s move to remove Dorsey comes in the face of several major events including the worsening situation with the coronavirus, U.S. presidential elections, and the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

Those events will likely attract more users to the site and could, in turn, drive more advertisers, thus increasing the company’s stock value.

Twitter, however, has fallen behind other social media platforms despite its widespread use. Reportedly, it has decided to focus on its core services even though other platforms have added features such as filters and stories.

It is unknown if a Dorsey ousting could change that policy as Twitter’s board of directors tries to increase its stock value.

See what others are saying: (Bloomberg) (Business Insider) (Fox News)

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Pokémon, Star Wars & Candy Crush: How DLCs & Microtransactions Changed The Gaming Industry

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1 month ago

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February 28, 2020

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While DLC’s (downloadable content) and microtransactions are a commonly accepted practice in the gaming community, they are also still highly controversial. Some lawmakers around the world have even condemned these types of business models, likening them to child-targeted gambling. In the United States, Republican Senator Josh Hawley has proposed a bipartisan bill that would ban a type of microtransaction in games aimed at minors. 

The topic of DLC’s and microtransaction is also a hot topic among fans, with many saying that while these features can help a game, a lot of times, they feel like companies abuse these practices. We want to know: What are YOU, as a consumer, willing to pay for?

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