Egirl Belle Delphine’s YouTube channel was banned without any warning from the platform. As you probably already know, content creators have to violate one or more of YouTube’s guidelines in order to get their channel deleted, and even then, they usually receive two warnings beforehand. But for Belle Delphine, this was not the case. Her YouTube channel was terminated straight away, without any warning. So what did Belle Delphine do exactly for her two million subscriber channel to get banned?

On 23 November 2020, Belle Delphine’s 1.79 million subscriber YouTube channel was terminated with no warning or notice from the platform. It has sparked some conversation in the YouTube community as well as Belle Delphine’s fanbase, and many videos have already shown up discussing the sudden ban.

If you search for Belle Delphine’s channel, you’ll see that it was actually terminated for violating YouTube’s policy on sexual content. Your search should say: “this account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy on nudity or sexual content.”

YouTube is already facing backlash online for not warning the creator and many are complaining that it is unfair as there are many videos already on YouTube that contain nudity or explicit content, but are not banned. On top of that, fans are aware that Belle Delphine should have received a couple of warnings before her channel was deleted.

On Twitter, Belle Delphine herself highlighted how suggestive videos like Cardi B’s ‘WAP’ were allowed to live on YouTube, yet her videos brought on the ban.

hey @TeamYouTube why was my youtube account terminated with no warning/no strikes for 'sexual content' when you allow and promote songs like 'W.A.P'?
seems a lil sus https://t.co/qzn7R7CzSi

— Belle Delphine (@bunnydelphine) November 23, 2020

It seems like she is banned due to the nature of her content, more specifically for her music video ‘I’m Back’, which she posted in June 2020 when she returned to social media.

While it remains unsure whether Belle Delphine will be coming back to YouTube, be that on her original channel or through a new one, it is not the first time that YouTube terminated huge creators’ channels such as James Charles, so she might come back soon.

YouTube did reply to Belle Delphine’s tweet, which means that we can at least be sure that they are investigating the situation.

Thanks for reaching out – mind sharing your channel URL so that we can take a look? Keep us posted!

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) November 23, 2020

Belle Delphine became widely popular on social media after her GamerGirl Bath Water stunt, where she sold her own used bath water on her merch store in July 2019 for £24 a jar. She claimed that the idea came from her followers who regularly commented on her posts saying that they would drink her bath water. Belle Delphine’s bath water sold out in three days.

The 21-year-old is also known for her explicit content on social media, most notably on her Instagram account, which has since then been banned too. As the queen of skimpy cosplay, Belle Delphine had a 4.5 million following before her Instagram ban. She also promised nude content of herself on OnlyFans and never delivered—another one of her attempts at trolling her fans.

Surely you’ve heard of revenge porn before, but hopefully you’ve never been introduced to the term as a victim of it. Revenge porn is defined as “revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person posted on the internet, typically by a former sexual partner, without the consent of the subject and in order to cause them distress or embarrassment.” While many of the videos and pictures end up on mainstream porn websites such as Pornhub or YouPorn, there is one platform in particular that takes pride in specialising in revenge porn hosting: AnonMe.org

Although it is now called AnonImages instead of AnonMe, nothing else seems to have changed for the infamous website. Despite a recent crackdown on revenge porn in many countries, on AnonMe, users still share and ‘trade’ pornographic photos of others. The website somehow runs unchecked. What is AnonMe about exactly and why are we still dealing with these kinds of platforms?

AnonMe is a non-consensual pornography (NCP) image board, also called a revenge porn site, which allows users to post adverts asking for information about someone specific. Personal details such as photographs, videos and even workplaces are then provided by other users on the platform, which the subjects obviously do not consent to being shared.

The requested content is then shared by anonymous users without any explanation on where it came from in the first place. Most images published are titled with the woman’s real name, and more often than not completed with an age and location too. As expected, underneath the pictures and videos shared on AnonMe, users (most probably male ones) leave insulting comments such as ‘slag’, ‘slut’ and more misogynistic slurs of the same type.

just found out i've been shared on an anonme board and it's actually so grim of men sharing nudes they've saved of girls without their consent and rating them/calling them slags

pls pls sign this petition to get the site shut down its the grimmest https://t.co/ebsHGkuYze pic.twitter.com/6vCQfPcJOv

— GINA TONIC (@GlNATONIC) November 29, 2019

Originally called Anon-IB, the website was shut down in 2018 after Dutch authorities arrested three of the platform’s administrators in April 2018 and seized its server. Things had been quiet since then, but not forgotten as Reddit and 4chan users still posted about Anon-IB from time to time, asking where the new alternative could be found.

While it seems unlikely that the exact same people who ran the first site are running the new versions of it that appeared between 2019 until now, users have flocked to it regardless with many requesting content they remember from the previous original site.

As previously stated, AnonMe is nothing more than a copy of the original Anon-IB. However in this case, newer seems to implicate crueller too. According to a Motherboard article on the birth of AnonMe published in February 2020, founder of the anti-NCP advocacy group Battling Against Demeaning & Abusive Selfie Sharing (BADASS) Katelyn Bowden explained that “while Anon-IB was willing to work with groups like BADASS to take down photos when victims asked, sites sharing NCP currently will now instead move content behind a paywall when victims—including underage victims—complain.”

Of course, none of these websites can be applauded but it is clear that revenge porn and the platforms that host it are only getting worse and worse, and so is their impact.

Similarly to the Fappening or Anon-IB previously, tracking the person or people behind AnonMe remains hard to achieve. First of all, the domain’s name is registered anonymously through a service in Russia that hides evidence of where the site is hosted. On top of that, AnonMe is protected by the internet security firm Cloudflare, which protects websites from malicious floods of traffic.

Surprisingly, it is not the first time Cloudflare has run into controversy. In the past, the security firm also protected sites dedicated to hateful content such as 8chan and neo-Nazi websites. Meanwhile, in 2019, Cloudfare banned a site that was meant to help sex workers stay safe, which endangered many sex workers by pushing them off internet platforms.

Long story short, the people behind AnonMe remain anonymous—for now, unfortunately. This website and the behaviour it promotes does nothing less than to encourage and promote a predatory mindset, bringing abuse and stalking along with it. While websites like this are still able to run, the people behind them run free too. Instead of making elaborate plans to stop teenagers from enjoying a bit of porn here and there, should we not focus on the source of the problems that some porn websites truly represent?