By Jake Navarro

SAN JOSE, CALIF—On Oct. 13, Alia Shelesh, known online as SSSniperWolf, went to the house of John Douglass, also known as YouTuber Jacksfilms, and leaked his address to her 5 million Instagram followers.

Both creators are native to California. SSSniperWolf, was live on Instagram when she drove from her shoot to Jacksfilms’ home, showing it on her stream, revealing his up-till-then private home.

In California, doxxing is only illegal if it falls under cyberbullying or harassment. Doxxing is when someone publishes private information non-consensually with malicious intent.

Jacksfilms and SSSniperWolf have had internet beef for the past year leading up to the event. SSSniperWolf has primarily made reaction-based content. Jacksfilms’ issue is that she wasn’t reacting, but just commenting on what’s happening in the video and not having any input, this is called non-transformative reaction content. In addition, she rarely credits the creators of the videos she’s reacting to.

Jacksfilms, a parody YouTuber known best for his “YIAY” series, made a channel titled JJJacksfilms where he critiques her reaction videos, credits the original video owners, and plays a bingo sheet based on common themes seen in her videos.

YouTube, after a thorough investigation, posted a statement shaming both sides for their actions as well as giving SSSniperWolf a temporary monetization suspension for violating their harassment and cyberbullying policy. Many argue this isn’t enough, and she deserves to be deplatformed for her actions.

People are taking a stance against YouTube as well. For one, they took a week to address and act on the situation, which many felt was too prolonged. In that week, the official X account posted:

“Would it be too meta to do a reaction video of a reaction video?” Many thought this was “tone deaf.” On top of that, YouTube started urging people to stop using ad blockers as it breaks their Terms of Service, but were avoiding SSSniperWolf’s violation which put other creators at risk. This brought into question how much YouTube cares about its creators.

CoryxKenshin, a black content creator with a large following, made a video titled “YouTube: Racism and Favoritism” where he spoke about favoritism behind YouTube’s policy team from his own experiences. A lot of people were pointing out how it seemed Sssniperwolf was being favored in this situation and pointed out the similarities.

About an hour after YouTube’s post, SSSniperWolf posted a public apology to X saying:

“I’m sorry to Jacksfilm, YouTube, the entire creator community, and my incredible fans for not being a better example for appropriate conflict resolution. Jacksfilm, while we certainly don’t see eye to eye and have our differences, I am sorry- I should’ve taken the opportunity to show young creators how professionals resolve conflict by communicating directly, respectfully, and privately; I will reach out directly and hope we can find some time to connect and communicate, respectfully.”

Many found this apology phony for a few reasons: her apology was posted after she had been suspended. In addition, she doesn’t take the time to acknowledge Jack properly in the apology, spelling his name wrong. 

“She could have taken the time to get his name right, she could have been more sincere about it with a longer apology,” sophomore Aiden Boyd adds. She then posted on a different, monetized channel which evaded her monetary suspension.