In 2016, Patrick Shyu started telling stories of his time as an engineer at Google and Facebook on his TechLead YouTube channel. Since then, Shyu has been delivering finance and tech tips in a deadpan drawl as the “final boss” of YouTube, showing why he’s “so good at coding” and even better at being a “millionaire.”
Sometimes, his arrogance borders on discrimination — in May 2022, he posted now-deleted tweets that said, “No one asked for women programmers.”
“When I used to conduct interviews for Google, I rejected all women on the spot and trashed their résumés in front of them,” he wrote.
In Shyu’s mind, TechLead is merely a satirical caricature. He told Passionfruit that he is a “fictional persona built to gain attention” and that anyone watching should “take his words with a grain or large amount of salt.”
At the end of the day, for Shyu, “YouTube is entertainment,” and those offensive tweets were “completely fabricated and should be obvious rage bait to anyone in the software industry.”
But Shyu’s other controversies cannot be explained away as a mustachio-twirling villain for clicks. Multiple content creators, like YouTube investigator Coffeezilla, have published videos accusing Shyu of various infractions, including creating a misleading cryptocurrency and abusing YouTube’s copyright system.
In a now-deleted response about the cryptocurrency, Shyu did not outright deny the allegations, and instead thanked Coffeezilla for the attention the coin received and called the creator a “racist” in a tweet. To Passionfruit, Shyu described Coffeezilla as “mostly an entertainer who has unfortunately caused reputational harm to many YouTubers.”
Though Shyu claims to be “not against constructive forms of criticism or free speech,” he has sent copyright notices to at least four YouTubers who have created critical content about him, three of whom Passionfruit spoke with.
“I maintain my copyright claims are valid,” Shyu said. “A person has a right to challenge usage of their videos and materials.”
Copyright Claimed
On June 15, YouTube essayist Internet Anarchist, whose real name is not known publicly, posted a video recapping some of TechLead’s controversies. Over the past two years, the Internet Anarchist has earned nearly a million subscribers covering controversial internet figureheads, like SSSniperwolf, Nikocado Avocado, and the recent flameout of DrDisrespect.
Unlike most of the Internet Anarchist’s essay subjects who simply don’t respond, Shyu put a copyright notice on the video on June 20 as it just hit one million views. The video used clips from TechLead’s 1.4 million subscriber channel — but the Internet Anarchist edited the footage heavily and added commentary, a seemingly classic case of fair use.
“I am just sitting on the couch watching some TV, and I started getting some Instagram messages from viewers saying, ‘I was watching a video, and suddenly it stopped halfway,’” the Internet Anarchist told Passionfruit.
An X post by the Internet Anarchist about the copyright notice was also taken down. X said the removal was due to a privacy guidelines violation, which Shyu told Passionfruit he sent in because it contained his “personal email address.” But that email address is currently public on TechLead’s YouTube page.
The Internet Anarchist became worried he would have to send a counternotice to get his video reinstated. To submit a counternotice on YouTube, creators are required to include their full legal name and physical address, unless they hire a lawyer to submit on their behalf. The name and address are then shared with the person who submitted the original notice.
The anonymous Internet Anarchist had previously sent counternotices with his real name to big corporations, but he said never to a rogue creator who might abuse access to his personal information.
Amid this notice, Shyu posted a now-deleted video claiming that there’s a “scam-tuber epidemic” of creators who are “not journalists” and are just “making hate content for the viewers.” He describes the Internet Anarchist’s video as “totally fabricated and non-sensical” — though he does not say what exactly he thinks the Internet Anarchist got wrong.
Shyu also said that if other YouTubers want to use his “likeness, for commercial gain, then to get a license for it” and that he tends “to copyright strike down any exposé videos.”
“If you are going to do business in this world, you are going to get doxxed,” Shyu said in the video. “One of the main reasons I’ll copyright strike a video is because I want to see who’s behind it, I want to know who these people are.”
The Internet Anarchist couldn’t believe that Shyu would openly admit to using YouTube’s copyright system to dox people. In addition, Shyu implied simply using his “likeness” would warrant a copyright strike, completely ignoring the fair use doctrine.
In the video, Shyu also misunderstands the pillars of fair use — claiming that these channels don’t fall under the defense because they don’t conduct “interviews” and that they use “copyrighted images.”
YouTube says on its website, “Misuse of the removal request web form, such as submitting false information, may result in the suspension of your account or other legal consequences.”
“It was possibly one of the worst response videos I think he could have made because he just made the situation worse for himself,” the Internet Anarchist said. “By admitting that he didn’t use the copyright system for copyright and didn’t even intend to take anything into court and was just using it as what he said was a hazing ritual.”
But on June 21, the Internet Anarchist woke up to a notification from Google that the notice had been thrown out. Shyu’s video on the subject went down around the same time, along with around 85 million views worth of other videos Shyu made.
As for why Shyu deleted all of these videos out of nowhere? To Passionfruit, Shyu said, “I unlist videos all the time, usually when I’m ready to move on to other topics. Unlike dramatubers, the TechLead channel is educational and tries to maintain a clean back catalog.”
Though the Internet Anarchist’s case is settled for now, he thinks more needs to be done to prevent erroneous copyright strikes in the future.
“He’s been abusing this tool for a while, and I think it’s time that YouTube takes some sort of action on people who do this,” the Internet Anarchist said.
TechLead’s History
These are not the only times Shyu has been accused of silencing critics through copyright claims. YouTuber Mutahar, aka SomeOrdinaryGamers, covers daily internet news and first made a video about TechLead in 2021 about his cryptocurrency project.
After posting another video on June 21 about what recently happened to Internet Anarchist, Mutahar posted on June 29 that his video on the subject was issued a copyright takedown notice, though the video is still up.
“It was a DMCA that was filed with the intention of removing a video that I believe is fair use,” Mutahar told Passionfruit.
Though he had dealt with companies and news organizations erroneously filing copyright notices on videos, Mutahar had never seen a creator “act so maliciously like this.” He was ready to fight this claim in court if needed, but YouTube denied it days later, and the video was never actually taken down.
A Darker Worry
2,500-subscriber-channel the Dark Company, which covers “scams, influencers and frauds,” told Passionfruit that they had started watching TechLead’s content about four years ago, but recently noticed a change.
The 21-year-old decided to create a video about TechLead in May 2024, which somehow appeased the algorithm and started pulling in over 270,000 views.
“I posted the video thinking nothing else would come of it because he said he was retired so I thought it was safe to post and that it wasn’t going to get copyrighted,” the Dark Company said. “Six days later, I woke up to a copyright strike.”
The explosive growth of Dark Company’s channel was immediately halted. But the creator says he didn’t worry because he knew his video fell under “fair use.” He filed a counternotice, which required using his full name and address.
Because the Dark Company was concerned that his personal information could be used maliciously, he “deleted all of his social media” with his name attached and told his family to unfollow him on “certain social media accounts.”
He also posted to X, hoping a “larger creator would notice” and bring attention to the issue. But in the end, he just waited, and the notice expired after 15 days.
After the copyright notice expired, the algorithm must have lost interest, because the video’s views slowed to a crawl.
“I was hoping that YouTube would at least boost the viewership but unfortunately that didn’t happen,” the Dark Company said. “The views slowed to a crawl.”
A Better System
YouTube’s copyright system can be a bit complicated to understand. After filing a copyright notice, YouTube will review it through a “combination of automated systems and human reviewers.” Then, it will determine if the notice needs more information or is not justified.
If YouTube does remove the content, the uploader receives a copyright strike on their channel but can appeal. YouTube terminates the account if a channel receives three strikes in 90 days.
“Those are very severe,” Mutahar said. “I mean, three of those, and you’re out.”
The system forces creators to share their personal information or spend an untold amount of money on a lawyer if they want to combat a false copyright claim. Some creators, like the mother-daughter duo Lillee and Laura Jean, are accused of using the system to silence critics (though Lillee and Laura never responded to the allegations).
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) was established in 1998 as a way for “U.S. copyright law to address important parts of the relationship between copyright and the internet,” according to the U.S. Copyright Office. Its main purpose was to protect corporations from having their intellectual property stolen, allowing them to file a notice with the site to have it taken down.
“By allowing false DMCA-ers or false flaggers in this capacity, it’s like all you’re doing is causing more indirect harm to the community,” Mutahar said. “It’s going to absolutely change the landscape for the worse.”
Though a provision was added in 2020 to create a Copyright Claims Board, which settled disputes of “relatively low economic value,” the system still hasn’t been reworked on a federal level to handle the modern social media landscape.
“I think that YouTube needs to change the system and not make it so that the person who received the claim is the one who needs to share everything first,” Internet Anarchist said.
Creators who can’t afford to pay legal bills or fight those fights suggest that YouTube is an unfair platform.
“It literally is a system as of right now designed to hamper the creator more than it is anything,” Mutahar said. “It really feels like the creator is the one that just loses overall.”
As for Shyu, he still maintains his copyright claims are valid. He also seems hellbent on keeping his online persona as a villainous tech bro.
But Shyu’s use of his “fictional” persona as a cover for bad behavior on the platform doesn’t work if he’s also abusing systems to silence critics. It wasn’t the character who made these copyright claims, it was the man behind the keyboard.
“I believe that a creator has copyright over all of their footage and that the best way for others to avoid copyright issues is to simply not use anyone else’s work without permission,” Shyu said. “The problem for most drama-tubers is they cannot achieve views if they don’t chase clout.”
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