Been a long, rainy couple of weeks in Portland, Oregon — but full of opportunities to connect and make sure the people I care about know how much they mean to me.
Lots of really exciting announcements coming up soon, but here’s a little bit of what I’ve been up to with Portugal. The Man as we move toward launching PTM Foundation this year…
Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, Senior Policy Advisor Cynthia Castro, Tribal Relations Director Laura John, and the Office of Government Relations have been working hand-in-hand with Communities of Indigenous Peoples and allies across the region to build a coalition of support for city-wide policy which will ensure that Land Acknowledgements take place at all City of Portland events! So awesome. Nice work, Commissioner! Thanks for hosting us last week at City Hall. We’re all super excited to support these efforts.
Later that same day, Zachary Carothers and I went to hear Tara Zhaabowekwe Houska speak about her work on the frontlines of environmental justice at the intersection of Indigenous Rights and it was nothing short of completely inspired.
We also had breakfast with Tara that morning and got to hear all about her mission and vision. So glad we got to connect while she was in town. My main takeaway is always: I have so much to learn.
The reality is, Indigenous Peoples face persistent and enduring challenges to their communities, their lands, and their basic human rights, with extremely limited support from the broad spectrum of philanthropic institutions…which is why the band has decided to launch PTM Foundation in the first place. The extreme disparity is wrong, and we’re going to do something about it.
When I was a kid I felt I deserved to be mistreated because I was gay. This had a lot to do with me not seeing grown gay people standing up for themselves — and it wasn’t safe to.
So when you see me fighting now, it’s not about winning.
I’m reclaiming myself, and all the years.
After over a full year of this super intense, targeted harassment campaign against me by the since-banned Reddit trolls, every single tech company has intervened except for YouTube, which just this week let us know they will not be taking action to protect me on their platform.
The teams at YouTube have all the facts, covered extensively everywhere from People Magazine to gay blogs, to the official Reddit blog itself. This situation caused Reddit to change their entire harassment policy, yet YouTube would still rather get paid for the clicks than help. More on that setup HERE.
The safety team at Reddit, which had previously been the garbage fire of the internet, said it best in their post about why they intervened: “Ban evaders (and others up to no good) often work across platforms, and so it’s important for those of us in the industry to also share information when we spot these types of coordinated campaigns.”
Yet, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s teams at YouTube refuse to look at the big picture and have sided with the content creators (trolls) whose entire goal in mocking me for my past mental health struggles, discrediting my career, publishing lies about crimes I’ve never committed, and attempting to dangerously “out” people in my private life for being gay, is to drive me to suicide — something they have stated plainly throughout this process as their end goal in torturing me.
YouTube’s charming clickbait algorithm serves up these videos, intended to organize troll narratives and coordinate these attacks across platforms, while also allowing these troll YouTube creators to monetize the abuse, to anyone who watches my music videos or searches my name. None of it is true, and all of it is meant to diminish, intimidate, cyberstalk and harass me, as part of this larger targeted abuse campaign.
No one should have to endure what I have over the past 18 months since this latest wave of homophobic hate and attempts to destroy me, my career and my reputation, began. Wikipedia locked the Logan Lynn article down FOR THIS VERY REASON. Facebook jumped in to help and removed all of the fake profiles and instances where even these exact videos that YouTube refuses to remove were posted on their platform and on Instagram. Twitter Support jumped in and banned these users from harassing me or posting these videos on their platform, too.
It is ONLY YouTube who refuses to do anything about their piece of this mess, and it’s absolutely disgusting — especially in light of their recent announcements and the positive PR they’ve received for supposedly updating their harassment policies to also include public figures. The reality is, it’s all for show. They have no intention of actually making YouTube safer for anyone, because clicks are clicks and ad revenue is ad revenue.
To anyone who could possibly help me over at YouTube and Google: I am literally begging you to just be as decent as Reddit. That’s a VERY low bar, and one you should be trying to hit.
This right here is a twisted business model:
Removing a handful of comments encouraging me to commit suicide under the videos, but leaving the actual videos where the trolls are organizing and amplifying those exact narratives and comments as their larger online abuse strategy misses the mark of community safety completely.
The Logan Lynn Reddit page got banned and shut down because these YouTube users and their troll friends took it over — an exact directive from one of the many videos we have reported on YouTube over the past year, encouraging viewers to find me on other sites to bully and harass me.
As far as my team, attorney, and management is concerned, the careless, irresponsible Executive Team at YouTube is solely responsible for the torture at this point because you continue to protect and promote the abuse as “content”. This is ALL on you. What you’re doing is dangerous and wrong.
