YouTube Takes Action on Banning Andrew Tate's 'Heir Apparent'

The man who became the “face” of Andrew Tate’s The Real World business school in place of the banned manosphere influencer has himself been deplatformed from YouTube, in what campaigners are hailing as a major blow against the controversial redpill “learning platform.”

YouTube has been carrying out a sweeping purge of big channels promoting The Real World, following a VICE News investigation revealing how Tate’s online business school was using social media platforms to target and exploit his young fans. YouTube channels promoting Tate and his site, with millions of subscribers and well over a billion views between them, have been culled amid the purge of recent weeks.

But campaigners warned that Tate and his team had already pivoted to using one of Tate’s close associates, U.S. manosphere influencer Justin Waller, as a replacement pitchman for The Real World in their recruitment videos, in order to sidestep a longstanding ban on Tate content on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. 

Now YouTube has taken action, terminating four channels affiliated with Waller that VICE News had flagged to the video-sharing giant. Among them was Waller’s main YouTube channel, which had more than 400,000 subscribers and 93 million views on his videos, and featured prominent links directing viewers to sign-up pages for The Real World.

READ: Leaving The Real World: How I escaped Andrew Tate’s get rich quick ‘cult’

The move has been welcomed by anti-Tate campaigners as a major blow against The Real World, which they see as a harmful platform which exploits young men, shutting down one of the site’s major recruitment channels.

“It's absolutely huge,” said Nathan Pope, an Australian man who has been leading a campaign to pressure social media companies into deplatforming The Real World.

“Waller's YouTube channel being terminated is significant, as he was looking to be Andrew Tate's heir apparent as the face of The Real World.”

Karim Mahmoud, a disaffected former The Real World student who has been actively warning other young men online not to sign up to the programme, said the ban on Waller - whose redpilled, manosphere messaging was largely identical to Tate’s - was “amazing news.”

Mahmoud made dozens of social media videos promoting The Real World as part of his coursework during his four-month stint as a member of the site last year, many of which featured Waller - a blond Louisianan known for his too-tight suits, and boasts of business expertise gained from a hardscrabble rise through the construction industry. The Real World students were advised by their tutors to focus their promotional content around Waller, said Mahmoud, because videos featuring Tate were likely to be taken down by social media platforms.

“They had to find an alternative [to Tate] or they would go out of business,” he said.

Waller, whose website states his goal is to “guide every gentleman into building an abundant life,” commented on the loss of his channel with a post on X. It included a screenshot of a message from YouTube, telling him his channel had been found to have “severe or repeated violations” of the platform’s community guidelines. 

“Lost my main YouTube channel today,” he wrote. “Too bad, back to work.”

The Real World - a cornerstone of Tate’s business empire - has come under intense scrutiny since the publication of a VICE News report earlier this month which detailed serious concerns about Tate’s $49-a-month programme, which promises to teach teen boys the entrepreneurial skills to get rich quickly. Instead, critics claimed, the site was exploiting the influencer’s young fans for their money and labour. It recruited them through promotional ads on social media, relying on laissez-faire moderation policies at YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram – despite the sites supposedly having banned Tate and The Real World content from their platforms.

Critics said students on the platform were being exploited as workers to power Tate’s online social media machine, through The Real World’s “affiliate marketing” campus. These students were tasked with making multiple social media videos promoting Tate and his business school each day, with the promise that, once they’d gained a big enough following on their social media accounts, they were entitled to earn a commission from each new recruit - a marketing model that had the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme.

Mahmoud said that he believed few students made any money from the scheme, despite being pushed by their tutors to work long hours - sometimes 16 a day - and bombarded with red-pill ideology amid what he described as a cult-like atmosphere.

Since the revelations in the article, YouTube has culled at least 12 large channels promoting The Real World on its platform which have been flagged by VICE News. The banned sites had more than 2 million subscribers and well over a billion views between them.

A YouTube spokesperson said the three Waller channels had been removed for circumventing the termination of a previously terminated user, TheRealWorld channel, which was against YouTube’s rules. TheRealWorld channel had itself been terminated following VICE News’s recent report into Tate’s business platform, on the grounds that it prominently featured content from Tate, who had been previously banned from the platform.

Pope said that while the ban on Waller was a major blow against The Real World, there was still more for social media companies to do regarding The Real World. Channels for other close Tate associates who act as secondary pitchmen for The Real World were still live on YouTube, despite having been repeatedly flagged to the company, along with others carrying content featuring Tate and Waller.

Meanwhile, he said, TikTok and Instagram appeared to have taken little, if any, action against the proliferation of The Real World recruitment content on their platforms.

“It's crucial that this is a catalyst for more action from YouTube, and from the other social media platforms that are yet to act,” said Pope.