YouTube star Ray William Johnson and the future of Maker Studios

More 800 million YouTube users need their YouTube news. Andy Smith is determined to give it to them.

Since 2007, the Ohio-based YouTuber has delivered the latest in community news, with stories ranging from the alarming to the heartwarming. Smith is on the topics that you want to know and the stories that you need to know, and he’ll tell you how they’ll both affect your time on site.

Every Wednesday, the Daily Dot spotlights a video from Smith’s triweekly updated Lion’s Den channel.

This week, Smith takes a hard look at Ray William Johnson’s fallout with Maker Studios and questions the company’s ethical future.

Ray William Johnson, the YouTuber with a 5 million-strong subscriber base—the largest on the massive video-sharing site—announced Tuesday that Los Angeles’ Maker Studios will no longer produce his supremely popular =3 (“Equals Three”) program.

Photo via The Lion’s Den/YouTube