Out of the loop

One thing to add to what others have said:

After having done these three or four very questionable things, people realized that YouTube's algorithm was essentially sending Pewdiepie's viewers down a radicalization pipeline. The algorithm would start recommending alt-right content to people who had watched Pewdiepie videos.

He himself still at that point made fun of the journalists who reported on this, essentially showing the stance of "I am not responsible for what my viewers do" and "I am not a Nazi and I am not radicalizing anyone".

In response to the fiverr video in 2017 he was dropped from his partner network and his Youtube Red show was cancelled midway into production. Additionally in what was called "adpocalypse", advertisers forced Google to disable ads from being shown on controversial videos.

And then in March 2019 a Nazi terrorist livestreamed himself shooting 50 people in two mosques in New Zealand. Before starting to shoot, the terrorist screamed "Subscribe to Pewdiepie!" This was the point where he finally seemed to wake up to the fact that some of his viewers actually were far-right extremists. And he stopped doing any edgy stuff that could be interpreted as being pro-Nazi.

Here's a couple of deep analysis on pewdiepie and the alt-right

The pewdiepipeline, how racist humor lead to vialonce: https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnmRYRRDbuw

The Alt-right playbook: How to radicalize a normie: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P55t6eryY3g

And additional points that no one had mentioned is that pdp, did a couple of videos, meme reviews, with people like Ben Shapiro and recommend books from Jordan Peterson, sending his million of impressionable young audience directly into misogynist, racist and homophonic content creators.

Hang on I'll edit my comment in a second with an explanation.

Copied from my comment in a different thread about this (with typo corrections):

"Many years ago he paid like 5 bucks on fiver to see if some Indian guys would write "heil Hitler" on a sign and hold it up for a video (they did). He was doing stupid edgy humor and playing with fire like many creators at the time. Many people canceled him "fully" a year or so after that when he had the "bridge incident". He called someone the n word for camping or something while he was playing PUBG. He apologized and took responsibility for using the word...sorta. He continued to make content for a few more years and then he "retired" in Japan with his wife and child. They post update videos every few months but more or less he got his bag and dipped out after he pulled too many stupid moves and was seen as "toxic" to work with.

I don't think he's a bad person, but that's just as someone who occasionally watched his videos over the years."

I am by no means a big PewDiePie fan/expert and I don't claim to know all the specifics, but this is what I gathered from being on YouTube often from the beginning and having two little brothers who went through a PewDiePie phase.

He grew up on the internet during the wild West period, with that being his point of reference for social acceptability. He didn't evolve with the rest of the internet as more diverse groups and more 'moral' groups changed what was acceptable.

His three major incidents were saying the n word, wearing an SS uniform when doing a response video to an article writer that called him a Nazi, and getting some fiverr people to write a sign that said 'kill all jews' by taking advantage of the fact they apparently didn't speak English. He's apologized for all but the middle multiple times and essentially left most of the internet after having his kid.

But since we're in the era of the internet we're in, nothing is ever forgotten or forgiven no matter what, and with the rise of actual Nazis across the world anyone that ever made edgy jokes or used inappropriate language has generally been swept up in it.

That all being said he's not exactly a great person, despite his massive charity work, he's just another entertainer, like all the rest. No better or worse than your average random person that got money and wealth way too young.

In the past, he was a gaming streamer. During many of his streams, his actions and words strongly suggested that he was racist and/or a Nazi. At least once, he was called out for using the n-word (with the hard r). He has never expressed any remorse.

Because of that, many people consider him to be the gateway of the alt-right pipeline. Essentially, children are attracted to his channel for the gaming content, and over time, they are influenced by his behavior to be increasingly accepting of racist and/or alt-right content (after which the YouTube algorithm will then feed them increasingly extremist content)

Since at least several years ago, he retired from his channel, started a family, and moved to Japan (not necessarily in that order). It's entirely unclear if he's changed his mind about any of his previous behaviors, and in the absence of any indicators of change, many people take the stance that he probably still is a racist/Nazi

I know the name PewDiePie, but I have no idea why he's so famous or why he was one of the biggest streamers in the world.

Is PewDiePie one of those ponies? Or a Brony?