Wow, yet another wealthy and famous lover of free speech is using a libel lawsuit to try to silence his critics!
This video is going to be a bit all over the place so I’m breaking it up into sections: first I’ll deliver the new news (since that will probably be in the title and so I want to get straight to it), then I’ll explain why I’m talking about for those who are new to my channel, and then I’ll give some updates on the previous libel cases I’ve talked about.
Okay, first up: Ethan Klein is the host of h3h3, a YouTube channel and later a podcast. He’s been very famous and popular online for many years now, starting out in the early 2010s as a “reaction” channel where he would comment on silly videos, sometimes alongside his wife, Hila. Recently, they’ve been criticized by some leftie YouTubers and streamers for seeming to downplay Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. I know, that was quite the jump, if you aren’t terminally online. Apologies. But yeah, the h3 show took a weird turn in the past few years.
In March of this year, YouTuber Noah Samsen published a video titled “The YouTubers Who Backed a Genocide.” Over the course of an hour, Noah lays out why he thinks that Ethan Klein, along with other content creators, including Mutahar Anas of Someordinarygamers, are manufacturing consent for the Israeli genocide by attacking pro-Palestine creators, downplaying the IDF’s atrocities, and spreading pro-Israeli hasbara, or propaganda.
Klein, who is now a multimillionaire living in Bel Air, where Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv live. Not the same house, I don’t think, but, yeah. Anyway, Ethan Klein got his lawyer to send Samsen a cease and desist, demanding he remove his video and apologize, on behalf of both Ethan and Mudahar.
As Samsen mentions in his video on the topic, it’s pretty obvious that this is an intimidation tactic. It’s an hour-long video with copious citations to support Samsen’s OPINION that these guys are backing the genocide. Like, if someone made a video saying that they think I am backing the genocide by not talking about it enough, that’s just, like, their opinion, man, and opinions aren’t generally subject to libel lawsuits in the US. And if they did manage to successfully argue that Samsen was stating a fact, they’d then have to prove that it was a false fact, which…I mean, it’s a pretty convincing video, but sure, maybe they could do that. And then they’d have to prove that Samsen knowingly lied about this fact, which, in my opinion, is pretty obviously not true because Samsen is pretty enthusiastic in follow up posts and videos that he thinks his opinion is correct.
The fact that Klein is, in my opinion, weaponizing the law to silence criticism, is deeply ironic. Back in 2016, when h3h3 was just a silly little reaction show, one of the goofy guys they frequently reacted to went by the name @MattHossZone, or “Bold Guy.” He made classic cringe videos in which he presented himself as a super confident dude who picked up hot women, and so Ethan and Hila would dunk on him. Bold Guy got upset, and to shut down Ethan and Hila from making fun of him he filed a lawsuit claiming that they were violating his copyright. This was big news amongst YouTubers, because obviously we rely a lot on fair use, the concept that allows us to comment upon newsworthy videos that other people upload. So the community rallied together and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help h3 fight back. It worked! The case went all the way to court, where a judge ruled that their commentary was fair use, setting a precedent that would go on to protect future creators.
So here we are, just nine years later, and the free speech hero has become a censorship villain. He is wildly successful–those “net worth” websites are never accurate so I’ll just say that with millions of subscribers, billions of views, and an entire streetwear company called Teddy Fresh, it’s safe to say that they are multi-millionaires. Noah Samsen, on the other hand…is not. He’s just a little sad guy making videos about the manosphere and rightwingers and zionists in his apartment.
Luckily, Samsen does have half a million subscribers, so hopefully if Klein and Muda move forward with their libel lawsuit, he can fundraise for his legal costs. But since their “deadline” for him to remove the video passed without anyone doing anything, Samsen is hoping they are bluffing, and so instead of fundraising for his legal fees, he’s fundraising for UNRWA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which is very cool.
Okay, so if you’re new to this channel, you might not really get what this has to do with science and critical thinking. Well! It turns out that a huge aspect of science and critical thinking is questioning and challenging assertions, and it becomes very important to do that when assertions are both false and dangerous. And the people most likely to make false and dangerous assertions are the people most likely to use whatever means they can to stop you from challenging them. For instance, I got interested in this area in the 2000s, when UK science writer Simon Singh wrote an article critical of chiropractors, leading to the British Chiropractic Association suing him for libel. UK libel laws back then were horrific–I mean, they still aren’t great but back then they were super bad, to the point where most people would just give up in the face of a libel threat, because if you go to court you could end up bankrupt even if you win.
But Simon did not give up. He lost in his first appearance, but appealed and eventually won. Then he went on to campaign to change the libel laws to be better, a campaign that I was very lucky to be able to help with in my own small way.
In the years since then, I’ve had a few threats myself, with perhaps my favorite being the lady who tried to get my videos removed from YouTube because I showed a screenshot of her Twitter account.
No, wait, my favorite is the “skeptic” who got a lawyer to send me a cease and desist so no one would know about accusations his ex-girlfriend made about him, so I hired the lawyer who had just finished beating his lawyer in a huge defamation lawsuit, leading to him backing down. That was really funny.
I don’t have any updates on those incidents (though it seems that the lady who tried to get my videos removed hasn’t been having the best of luck in courts in the past few years), but I DO have some updates on other defamation cases I’ve covered.
Back in January, I talked about the credible allegations of sexual assault lodged against Neil Gaiman from several different women. I pointed out that the allegations came from the UK, which is still a very easy place to sue for libel. Despite that, at the time of my video Gaiman had not made any such threats. But, just last month, he DID file a lawsuit. Not a libel lawsuit, though–no, he decided to sue one of his accusers because by telling the media about Gaiman’s assault, she violated an NDA. Caroline Walner was the woman who said he abused her when she was the caretaker of one of his properties, and she signed a non-disclosure agreement in 2021. By telling New York Magazine that he, for instance, climbed into bed with her and his sleeping 4-year old child and took her hand and put it on his dick, he says she violated that NDA and now needs to pay him more than $500,000. Which is interesting. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems like maybe to violate a non-disclosure agreement you’d have to disclose things that actually happened. But maybe not! But also, it’s weird that he would sue her over the NDA and not libel. But again, I’m just a humble YouTuber, not a big city lawyer suing a woman for half a million dollars because she says she was sexually assaulted.
Next up, in September of 2023 I talked about Francesca Gino, a Harvard professor who sued a group of data nerds to try to stop them from revealing that they found very strong evidence that she was a fraud who made up her data. She also sued Harvard for following up on their findings, confirming that she was super suspicious, and putting her on unpaid leave. Well, great news! That lawsuit was dismissed in September of last year for the data nerds, and it was mostly dismissed for Harvard, who were still on the hook to rebut the accusation “that Gino’s contract with Harvard was breached by allegedly subjecting her to unfair disciplinary actions.” It appears that that’s still going on, after Gino kept amending the suit and changing her legal team.
Finally, in June of 2023 I talked about Blair Zon, aka Illuminaughtii, the 1.7-million subscriber YouTuber who covered scams and then completely tanked her entire channel by accusing LegalEagle (an actual lawyer) of stealing her editing style and then getting completely bodied by people revealing her history of plagiarism and alleged abuse of her friends and employees. She responded by suing three of the people accusing her of abuse. On New Year’s Day of this year, one of the defendants, Oz Media, posted this short video.
Not super juicy, but honestly it’s not surprising. A lot of times, this is how these things end because libel suits are incredibly expensive and can be drawn out for years, so often, things just settle out of court and the rest of us rubberneckers don’t even get to enjoy the view.
Regardless, I think we can call this a happy ending, as the defendants seem satisfied, their videos are still public, and the entire world knows what a terrible person iilluminaughtii is. As of this recording, she’s lost half a million subscribers and hasn’t posted a video in a year.
So, that’s a lot of good conclusions for the previous libel bullies I’ve discussed. Let’s hope that trend continues in the ongoing cases of Neil Gaiman suing to silence his accuser, and of course that of Ethan Klein threatening to sue to silence criticism of his anti-Palestinian behavior. If you support the pursuit of knowledge, the scientific method, and the correcting of misinformation, you must help fight against the wealthy bullies who use the court system to silence speech they don’t like.
