Disney Cuts Ties With YouTube's Biggest Star

Felix Kjellberg—better known as PewDiePie—is YouTube's highest-paid star, making an estimated $15 million last year, but he has lost his deal with Disney over posts deemed to have crossed the line from "provocative and irreverent" to simply hateful. Disney said it was cutting its ties with the 27-year-old Swede after it was contacted by the Wall Street Journal over several PewDiePie videos with anti-Semitic content, including a Jan. 11 post in which two men hired by Kjellberg through a crowd-sourcing website hold up a sign reading "Death to All Jews." In other videos posted over the last few months, Kjellberg displays swastikas drawn by his fans and shows clips from Hitler speeches.

PewDiePie, who rose to fame through video game commentary and has had his videos viewed more than 14 billion times—more than anybody else on YouTube—was associated with Disney through the Maker Studios network, which Disney bought in 2014. He has denied being anti-Semitic, saying his jokes are being taken out of context, the BBC reports. He says that with the video featuring the "Death to All Jews" banner, he was "trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online" and that people "would say anything" for money. (More YouTube stories.)