A few weeks ago, Ethan Klein and Mutahar Anas signaled their intent to sue fellow YouTube Noah Samsen for defamation after he labeled them genocide supporters. While this might seem like just another internet beef, the stakes are high enough to potentially change YouTube forever.
Who is who in this legal showdown?
The stakeholders in this case are an unlikely duo of YouTubers who had a falling-out some years ago but are on good terms today.
Ethan Klein: The podcast host who changed YouTube law
Ethan Klein is an American-Israeli content creator who’s been active on YouTube since 2011. He and his wife Hila rose to prominence with YouTube channel h3h3Productions, which popularized the reaction video format.
In 2017, the Kleins launched another YouTube channel, H3 Podcast, dedicated to live commentary podcasts with a wide variety of guests. As of May 2025, h3h3Productions and H3 Podcast have 5.6m and 2.7m subscribers, respectively.
Klein’s outspoken persona and critical approach to pretty much everything have often resulted in controversial content. This made him an influential voice in the YouTube space, but also a frequent target of online harassment.
Beyond its cultural impact, the work of Ethan and Hila Klein helped shape the legal landscape surrounding content creation. That’s thanks to a lawsuit brought against them by YouTuber Matt Hoss, who in 2016 alleged that the pair infringed on his copyright by reusing the footage from one of his videos they were making fun of.
The Kleins successfully argued that their reaction video constituted fair use, eventually winning the case in August 2017. The resulting court ruling was the first of its kind to apply US fair use law to YouTube, thus being widely touted as a landmark case that helped legitimize reaction content.
Mutahar Anas: The gamer-turned-commentator
Hey pic.twitter.com/PEoVYYS4UT
— Mutahar (@OrdinaryGamers) April 7, 2025
Mutahar Anas is an Indian-Canadian content creator who’s been active on YouTube since 2007. His first channel, mutahar1, focused mainly on gaming but never gained much traction and was eventually made private.
In March 2012, Mutahar launched his second channel, SomeOrdinaryGamers. 13 years and 3,300 videos later, it has over 3.8m subscribers.
SomeOrdinaryGamers was initially focused on let’s-plays, but eventually transitioned to commentary of technology and internet culture, with topics ranging from the Deep Web to MrBeast YouTube drama.
Known for his down-to-earth persona and analytical approach, Mutahar has become a prominent voice in the YouTube commentary community—especially for his willingness to weigh in on drama.
Ethan and Mutahar haven’t always been friends. In a now privated video Mutahar posted on April 10, 2020, he tore into Ethan Klein for several reasons.
The history between Ethan and Mutahar is marked by a brief but intense conflict. In April 2020, Mutahar published a scathing critique of Ethan Klein where he criticized him for allegedly mistreating some of his podcast guests—including fellow YouTuber Keemstar—and for donation-shaming Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for “only” giving $100 million to COVID-19 research.
A week later, Klein shared a video response titled Everybody Loves Ethan, in which he denied Mutahar’s accusations and claimed the YouTuber doxxed his location. The beef didn’t last much longer. On April 19, Mutahar issued an apology to Klein and took down the video criticizing him.
Noah Samsen: The BreadTuber who took things too far?
Noah Samsen is a YouTube commentator and video essayist with over 550,000 subscribers as of May 2025.
Samsen describes his channel as “something between commentary and left-ish political essay content.”” He considers himself part of the so-called BreadTube, a group of YouTubers creating content from a leftist perspective.
While BreadTube consists of various leftist ideologies, its very name stems from The Conquest of Bread, a classic piece of anarchist literature by Russian anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin. So, while not all BreadTubers hold radical views, that element is definitely part of the space.
Samsen exemplifies the more extreme side of BreadTube better than most, as he has a history of criticizing other leftists—often because they are not left enough.
In one recent example of such a move, he attacked Klein so viciously that he’s now facing a defamation lawsuit.
- Ethan Klein and Mutahar Anas sue Noah Samsen for labeling them "genocide supporters" in Gaza conflict commentary.
- The case could establish a legal boundary between criticism and defamation under California's strict "actual malice" standard.
- Samsen doubles down instead of retracting, admitting he used Klein's image for clickbait.
- The outcome may set a precedent for all creators, defining new rules for political commentary online.
Genocide accusations
On March 11, Noah Samsen posted a video titled “The YouTubers Who Backed a Genocide.” Over the course of one hour, Samsen accused Ethan Klein of spreading “zionist propaganda” regarding the ongoing Gaza–Israel conflict.
Samsen repeatedly labeled Klein a supporter of the Gaza genocide, accusing him of spreading “the Hamas mass rapes hoax,” along with “overt misinformation” and “lies about Hezbollah and Ansar Allah” meant to delegitimize their beef with Israel.
He also accused Klein of spreading “long-debunked” talking points denying the existence of Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs. He went on to claim Klein smeared a survivor of “the US-backed Saudi genocide in Yemen as a terrorist with zero credible evidence.”
Many of Samsen’s claims cited Klein’s Content Nuke video from January 31, in which he apologized for platforming Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker, a prominent far-left political commentator and streamer. Klein said he regretted doing so because HasanAbi has been radicalizing liberals, including h3h3Productions viewers.
Samsen’s video also labeled Mutahar as a genocide supporter, sharing two heavily redacted clips from his past content. One segment features a brief excerpt from Mutahar’s reaction to the Palestine comments that got Asmongold banned from Twitch.
The other set of Samsen’s clips came from SomeOrdinaryGamer’s October 2024 video “Twitch Is a Disgustingly Evil Platform.”
In this video, Mutahar accused Twitch of selectively enforcing its community guidelines, pointing out that streamers like Frogan could make inflammatory statements—such as wishing PTSD on US soldiers—without facing bans.
Noah Samsen doubled down on his claims in a March 25 video examining some of the responses to his first essay.
When YouTubers lawyer up
On March 31, Samsen received a retraction request from Mutahar and Klein’s attorneys. The 16-page document demands that he walk back his comments labeling the two YouTubers as genocide supporters on two occasions.
Mutahar’s attorneys argued that the clips Samsen used were taken out of context, omitting key parts of his videos where he explicitly condemned genocide and voiced support for Palestinian rights.
Ethan Klein is officially demanding a retraction from Noah Samsen
— yeet (@Awk20000) April 2, 2025
He sent a joint letter (with Mutahar) via his lawyer
“Our clients demand that you provide a retraction and correction of all the defamatory statements identified in this letter”
16 page letter attached below pic.twitter.com/zIf9LW04Qj
The request also labels several of Samsen’s statements about Klein as factually false—including claims that he spread Hezbollah misinformation, pro-Israeli hoaxes, Nakba denial, and colonial justification narratives.
Klein and Mutahar’s attorneys describe Samsen’s video essay as presenting the label “genocide supporters” as a factual assertion rather than an opinion. In doing so, they argue, he opened himself up to actionable defamation.
The letter accuses Samsen of reckless disregard for the truth, misquoting sources, and relying on biased figures like BadEmpanada—someone with a long history of viciously attacking both Ethan and Hila Klein with no basis in reality. Klein and Mutahar demand immediate retraction and correction, warning that legal action may follow otherwise.
Can Ethan and Mutahar prove Samsen defamed them?
To win their case, Klein and Mutahar must navigate California’s stringent defamation laws, which present significant legal hurdles even for seemingly clear-cut cases of harmful speech.
The tort of defamation in California—where the case is filed—can’t exist without malicious intent. “Malice is a high bar,” Jamie E. Wright, an LA trial attorney and Wright Law Firm founder, tells me during a video call. “You’re basically saying the defendant made a false statement knowingly.”
Regardless of whether Samsen believed what he was saying, he’s so far done nothing to comply with the request to take back his outlandish claims. Interestingly, this behavior alone potentially strengthens the defamation argument.
“The pre-litigation letter puts Noah on notice,” Wright explains, noting that his continued refusal to take down the allegedly slanderous materials “may work against him” in proving he acted defamatory.
Why this case could change content creation forever
At the heart of this potential lawsuit is a question that could reshape the boundaries of commentary on YouTube: When does harsh criticism cross the line into defamation?
For years, creators have operated under the broad umbrella of free speech, especially on platforms like YouTube and Twitch where heated political takes and personal callouts are part of the culture.
This case, however, is filed in California, a state with some of the strongest anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) protections in the US. As such, it could define where the legal boundary between political criticism and defamation actually lies.
The lawsuit argues that Samsen presented his accusations not as opinion, but as fact, which is a crucial legal distinction. While U.S. defamation law protects even inflammatory opinions, factual claims that are false and damaging can be grounds for a lawsuit.
If the court sides with Klein and Mutahar, it could set a precedent that changes the ruleset for content creators permanently.
The legal system has to balance protecting free speech with protecting reputations, which creates a lot of moving parts. What makes California unique is that when the subject is a public figure or a limited-purpose public figure (like many YouTubers), the standard is actual malice.
Jamie E. Wright, Esq.
What makes this moment pivotal is that the creator economy has matured, but its legal boundaries haven’t caught up. Influencers operate like public figures, yet there’s little clarity on how traditional defamation standards apply to online commentary, especially in politically charged discourse.
California’s creator battleground
All this ambiguity is especially fraught in California, where, as Wright explains, the bar for proving defamation is as high as it gets.
Because all parties here are public figures, or at least what the law calls “limited-purpose public figures” (people who voluntarily step into public controversies), the challenge isn’t just proving the statements were false.
YouTubers alleging defamation also have to show “actual malice,” meaning the defendant either knew the claims were false or “acted with reckless disregard for the truth”—a phrase used by both Wright and Ethan and Mutahar’s attorneys.
If this dispute does end up in court and runs its full course, it could help clarify what that “reckless disregard” actually looks like on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Is using a knowingly misleading thumbnail enough? What about amplifying inflammatory claims without checking the facts?
With his 2017 win against Matt Hoss, Klein played a key role in shaping how fair use is understood on YouTube. He may now be positioned to influence another underdefined area: What counts as defamation in creator-to-creator commentary.
In short: This isn’t just about one video essay. It’s about the future rules of engagement for millions of creators online—what can be said, under what circumstances, and where the legal boundaries of commentary actually fall.
The left’s ideological purity test
This YouTube drama didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Rather, it’s the byproduct of a growing ideological rift within the online left.
In recent years, platforms like Twitch and YouTube have fostered a hyper-politicized creator culture, where ideological purity often overrides nuance.
Influencers like Hasan Piker sit at the top of this ecosystem, while smaller creators like Samsen have followed suit, embracing a scorched-earth approach to political discourse.
"aha your so funny 😂😂 come over, me n my bro r chillin talking bout improving the material conditions of the working class" pic.twitter.com/AWWhmZCneb
— @ostonox.com 🦋 (@ostonox) June 27, 2022
Support for causes like Palestinian liberation has, in some circles, evolved into a kind of purity test, one where even fellow leftists risk being branded traitors for straying from the most radical framing.
In that climate, calling someone a “genocide supporter” isn’t a shocking escalation—it’s just another day online. But this lawsuit hints that there may finally be consequences for throwing around those labels without care.
No-retraction Noah responds
As Mudahar and Ethan explaine in an early April episode of the H3 Podcast, Samsen now has a choice to make: “to retract or to lawyer up.”
Hasan says he’s hooked his lawyer up with Noah Samsen after Ethan Klein sent a retraction demand letter
— yeet (@Awk20000) April 7, 2025
Hasan and his friend say it’s just “scare tactics”
“I linked my lawyer up with Noah..this is ridiculous to do..scare tactic” pic.twitter.com/g1Geo6ebqO
Hasan recently claimed he connected Samsen with his lawyer, which would suggest that choice has already been made.
But that may not be the case, as Samsen seems to think the pair is bluffing. He said as much in a 30-minute video posted on May 15, which saw him downplay the legal threat. Samsen is effectively daring Mudahar and Ethan to follow through.
As if that didn’t add enough fuel to the fire, Samsen seems to admit he used Klein’s face in the thumbnail of his controversial video because he believed it would generate clicks—not because he thought it’s perfectly accurate to call him a genocide supporter.
“The reason I made that video was on a pretty simple basic principle, which is being against genocide. And that principle manifests itself in me wanting more people to know about how the media is normalizing this genocide. That same principle is why I made the videos about these guys. It just so happens that when YouTubers are in the thumbnail, more people click on the video. Ethan is aware of this phenomenon. Obviously, he’s used it for me and many others.”
Noah Samson
Principle over payoff
Wright was diplomatic in fielding my question about the likelihood of this drama ending in settlement. “I’ve tried enough cases to say this confidently—it often comes down to the financial positions of the parties and their willingness to dig in,” she says.
In California, roughly 95% of all personal injury claims, defamation included, end in settlement. That said, about 99.9% of them aren’t brought by Ethan Klein.
“If even one client is set on going to trial—especially to ‘teach a lesson’—then that’s what happens,” Wright shares. As it happens, Klein has long subscribed to the “it’s about sending a message” approach to legal action, especially when he felt a line was crossed.
And this time, the message isn’t just for Noah Samsen, but for the entire YouTube and Twitch commentary ecosystem that thrives on moral absolutism.
