SSSniperWolf vs. Jacksfilms: Doxxing and harassment controversy explained

Dshae Zulkiflee

Dshae Zulkiflee

The feud between SSSniperWolf and Jacksfilms over reaction content has crossed over to real life when she doxxed Jacksfilms on her Instagram.

Veteran YouTubers Ssniperwolf and Jacksfilms' dispute with one another is going for the worse. Since 2022, Jacksfilms has been calling out SSSniperWolf on her reaction content which he believes to be not acceptable under the fair use rules. Recently, SSSniperWolf took the feud to the real world where she revealed Jacksfilms' house, essentially committing a crime called doxxing.

Doxxing is exposing personally identifiable information about an individual to the public. In certain places, doxxing is counted as an illegal act and may be punished by the law. In California, where both SSSNiperWolf and Jacksfilms are residing, doxxing may be considered illegal under California's laws against harassment.

On October 14, SSSniperWolf posted a few stories on Instagram targeting Jacksfilms. It started with a poll asking whether she should give Jacksfilms a visit, indicating she knows where the other content creator lives. She then posted a recording of the outside of Jacksfilms's house uncensored to her 5.6 million followers on Instagram.

Jacksfilms was streaming at the time SSSniperWolf uploaded the stories and ended the live stream looking distraught. Since then, Jacksfilms has called out SSSniperWolf on her action, calling it "creepy, gross, violating".

Why is Jacksfilms feuding with SSSniperWolf?

Jacksfilms, whose real name is John Douglass, has been one of the content creation pioneers on YouTube, uploading content as early as 2006. He is famous for making parodies and satirical content, such as his Your Grammar Sucks series and his infomercial spoofing parodies.

Jacksfilms at Shorty Awards 2018
Jacksfilms at Shorty Awards 2018

Jacksfilms has always been vocal against the reaction video genre on social media that provides non-transformative values. Reaction video is one of the sub-genres of the fair use genre, where it includes commentary, criticism, news reporting, and education content. This type of video is banking on the fair use legal doctrine as a defense against copyright infringement.

A lot of YouTubers fall into the trend of making live reactions, including SSSniperWolf. Legally known as Alia Shelesh, SSSniperWolf is famous for her reaction content, where she does live reactions to TikTok's compilations and posts them on her social media. In her earlier days of content creation, she was known for her gaming videos and later included variations of vlogs and DIY content.

SSSniperWolf at the 2019 Kids' Choice Awards
SSSniperWolf at the 2019 Kids' Choice Awards

She has 34 million subscribers on her YouTube's main channel, 5.6 million followers on Instagram, and 19 million followers on TikTok. According to Social Blade, SSSniperWolf's estimated income from her YouTube videos is about $540.6K USD to $8.6M USD in a year. In 2022, she reportedly bought a $7 million USD mansion with her partner.

This apparently caught Jacksfilms' attention. In his first video about SSSniperWolf in October 2022, he announced a new parody channel called "JJJacksfilms" that focuses on calling out SSSniperWolf's "non-transformative" content, giving credits to the uncredited creators in her videos, and making parodies of her reactions. Since then, the channel has garnered 457k subscribers with more than 50 videos on the parody channel.

The online feud comes to a real-life threat after a brief fight on X

He stopped uploading to the parody channel in March 2023. In late June, he called out SSSniperWolf on X when she denied her content to be stolen ideas. She then replied to his tweet accusing Jacksfilms of copying her content in hopes that his channel would blow up. She also accuses him of being sexist and never calling out other male reaction channels.

JJJacksfilms then came out of a short retirement with new parodies on SSSniperWolf, giving grades to her reaction and creating bingo games to make fun of her videos. He also encourages content creators who have their original videos on SSSniperWolf's reaction video to request their videos to be taken down if they think it doesn't fall under the fair use rules.

According to YouTube's policies, fair use rules can differ in the international scene. In the United States, the judges will decide what is considered fair use depending on these four factors:

  • The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
  • The nature of the copyrighted work
  • The amount and substantiality of the portion used relative to the whole copyrighted work
  • The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Jacksfilms was succeeding in his mission when he and his followers realized that some of their reports went through and SSSniperWolf had to cut off some of the claimed content from her videos. He last uploaded a video parody on October 14. A few hours later, his personal address was leaked by SSSniperWolf to the internet.

Jacksfilms wants SSSniperWolf to be deplatformed

He talked about the incident in his latest video on his YouTube channel. "In my seventeen years on YouTube, I've never once had someone come to my home and vaguely threaten me. Ssniperwold needs to be deplatformed".

"In my seventeen years on YouTube, I've never once had someone come to my home and vaguely threaten me. Ssniperwold needs to be deplatformed".

JACKSFILMS

SSSniperWolf posted another video on her Instagram Story insisting that she considers Jacksfilms content to be a form of harassment. "This guy's entire channel is just me, me, me. Every single video for the past few months has been about me".

Jacksfilms denies his content to be a form of harassment against SSSniperWolf. He has said in previous videos that his purpose in creating a video regarding SSSniperWolf is to criticize her non-transformative commentary, cases of content theft, and freebooting. He also said that in his satirical content, he made sure to credit the creators in Sssniperwolf's reaction videos.

He insisted on the fact that if SSSniperWolf wanted to reach out to him, she could've done so through other means. "But there's one thing you don't do. You do not show up at someone's house. That's simply a line you do not cross."

His wife also took it to X to express her concern about SSSniperWolf's action and demand YouTube take action. "Tonight SSSniperWolf came to my home, posted it on her Instagram for all to see, and tried to instigate a confrontation. I now have to worry about what she, as one of your favored 'creators'".

SSSniperWolf defended herself again in her Instagram stories, where she said that accusing her of doxxing is "defamation" and that he "posted his address on Google".

Jacksfilms is still appealing to YouTube to take action on SSSniperWolf

In the recent video, Jacksfilms calls for YouTube to take her channel off their platform. "YouTube needs to step in and take action. If this goes unpunished, then it sets a terrifying precedent that you can dox and stalk your critics so long as you have a big YouTube audience."

He also continued to plead with YouTube to take action on his X page. "I've sent video evidence to the appropriate channels and am happy to share directly with you. This is a clear example of doxxing and a clear violation of your policy stated here."

At the time of writing, YouTube still has not given an official response to the incident.

What do other content creators have to say about the doxxing incident?

Fellow content creator Asmongold uploaded a 40-minute video talking about the incident. "It doesn't matter if somebody makes a bad video about (you). You don't show up at their f*cking house. You don't dox their location, you don't put their family in danger".

He listed a few things a person can do if they believe someone is harassing them. "You can send a copyright strike, you can have a takedown request, you can ask him to stop making videos about you. You can report them to YouTube, you can file a lawsuit. All five of these things are acceptable ways to deal with somebody who you believe is harassing you."

MoistCr1TiKaL also voiced out his bafflement, saying he didn't think that a famous YouTuber such as SSSniperWolf would be involving herself in something that could receive a huge backlash. "It's just an extremely degenerate f*cked up response from SSSniperWolf here. It's borderline illegal, I think. I don't think you can just dox somebody like this and if it's not illegal, it's against YouTube's rules at the very least. And it violated the Geneva Convention of Internet content creators where you never take Internet beef into the real world."

Ludwig calls on YouTube to provide monetization tools for re-uploaded content

Ludwig said in his video that SSSniperWolf could probably argue the fact that Jacksfilms content that focuses solely on her is borderline harassment. "But she lost all of that the moment she doxxed them, Just threw it right out the window, any semblance of an argument. Any slight credit that a human could have given her is lost when she does a larger ultimate evil crime (that) endangers him in that way."

He then continued on Jacksfilms' notion that no one is policing content theft on YouTube, where Ludwig insisted it is YouTube's responsibility to give creators a way to monetize their re-uploaded content. "YouTubers should have that tool. It would be very helpful and then they wouldn't have to feel like their only tool is complaining on Twitter until maybe the creator is shamed out of doing it or trying to delete their whole channel."

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