YouTube said it will temporarily suspend advertising from David Dobrik‘s channels, after a woman said she was raped by a member of his entourage in 2018.
Dobrik, 24, rose to fame with comedy and prank videos produced with a group of his L.A. friends called the “Vlog Squad.” A report by Insider last week documented sexual-assault allegations by a woman against a former member of the Vlog Squad, Dom Zeglaitis, who said she was too drunk to consent to sex. Dobrik had shot and posted a video of the woman entering a bedroom (which he has since removed); this week, he admitted he “should have never posted it.”
In a statement, a YouTube rep said, “We have strict policies that prohibit sexual harassment on YouTube and take allegations of sexual assault very seriously. We have temporarily suspended monetization on David Dobrik and Durte Dom channels for violating our Creator Responsibility policy.”
Dobrik has 18.5 million subscribers on his primary channel, 8.7 million on his second channel (Dobrik Too) and 1.5 million for Views (the video channel of the Views podcast, “co-hosted by sexy 24-year-old millionaire David Dobrik and 47-year-old divorced dad Jason Nash,” per the channel’s description). YouTube’s demonetization of Dobrik’s channels and the Durte Dom channel was first reported by Insider.
In the wake of the allegations, several brands that had deals with Dobrik — including HBO Max, EA, HelloFresh, Dollar Shave Club and SeatGeek — have cut ties with him.
In addition, Dobrik quit the board of Dispo, a camera-app startup he co-founded, and investors in the company including Spark Capital, Seven Seven Six and Unshackled Ventures have distanced themselves from Dispo (with the latter two saying they would donate profits from the app to organizations helping sexual-assault survivors).
Dobrik initially addressed the accusations in a YouTube video last week titled “Let’s Talk.” “Consent is something that’s super, super important to me,” he said in the video. “I’ve been really disappointed by some of my friends, and for that reason I’ve separated from a lot of them.”
Dobrik posted a second video on the subject on Tuesday, in which he said in part, “I fully believe the woman who came out against Dom.” He continued, “Even though I got the consent to post that video, I should have never posted it. And what I understand now, and I didn’t understand before, is that she sent that text [approving the video’s posting] because she felt like she had to, not because she wanted to, and that’s fucked up, and I’m sorry… I want to apologize to her and her friends for ever putting them in an environment that I enabled that made them feel like their safety and values were compromised.”
In the video, Dobrik also said, “I might take a short break from the social media stuff, because I realize there’s a serious lack of infrastructure when I make any kind of content. And I want to be able to have a place of checks and balances.”
Representatives for Zeglaitis did not immediately respond to a request sent to the email listed on his Durte Dom channel.
