Ethan Klein set legal precedent for creators once, and he’ll do it again — with or without their support

Ethan Klein, host of the live ‘H3 Show’ on YouTube, is no stranger to a courtroom. He has weathered — and won — multiple lawsuits, but this is the first time that Klein will be the taking the offensive.

Matter of Law

In 2016, Ethan Klein was sued for copyright infringement for a video he uploaded to his YouTube channel, making fun of fellow creator Matt Hoss’ video. Hoss sued Klein for using his footage, accusing Klein of breaching his copyright. Klein was offered a settlement figure of $5,000 but chose to fight the lawsuit, and in 2017, he won the case under fair use legislation, setting an official legal precedent for YouTube creators everywhere in a landmark decision.

At the time, Klein had the support of the internet. Creators vocally supported him through their online platforms and financially supported his efforts through a GoFundMe for legal costs. This time around, it seems, he is on his own.

Sounding the warhorn

This time around, Klein is the plaintiff, taking on one of the biggest websites on the internet: Reddit. Specifically, Klein is suing the moderators of a “snark” subreddit, alleging they have engaged in a campaign of targeted harassment towards Klein, his staff and his family over a period of years.

To fully understand the allegations, we need to consider the change in the online environment over the last few years. There are a few major factors involved, mainly a falling out with a former co-host, Klein and his wife’s Jewish-Israeli identities, and the war in the Middle East.

Over the eight years Klein has been hosting the H3 Show, he has attempted two recurring collaborative series with popular online creators. The first, Frenemies, ended in a live-streamed blow-up; the second initially ended quietly but has not remained so.

In short, in 2021, Klein began a collaboration with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, called ‘Leftovers’. The idea was to provide a left-leaning, political commentary and entertainment show online to compete with the plethora of right-wing offerings. In 2023, the show abruptly came to an end when Klein, an Israeli dual-citizen, and co-host Hasan Piker, who has positioned himself as the left’s voice for Palestine, came to a crossroads over the Israel-Gaza conflict in the wake of the October 7th attack.

Their differences were not ideological; the two hosts had similar, long-held stances on the occupation.

The conflict between them began when Klein criticised Piker for allowing, even fostering, anti-semitism in the debate by not acknowledging the humanity of Israelis. This conflict came to a head recently, with Klein uploading a “Content Nuke” on Piker to his original H3H3Productions channel, which highlighted instances of Piker referring to “baby settlers”, interviewing an anti-semetic terrorist on his stream, appearing to make light of the death of Israeli children and questioning the validity of the narrative that Israeli women were raped on October 7th.

Fast-forward to 2025, and a subreddit called “H3 Snark” is in Klein’s crosshairs following two years of what he believes to be a targeted harassment campaign to smear him and his wife and hurt both of their businesses.

Among Klein’s allegations against the subreddit are the accusations that the community, and more specifically the moderators of the subreddit, were involved in and/or encouraged;

• The intentional spread of misinformation, including but not limited to a fabricated story about a deleted post, complete with a photoshopped image, designed to paint Klein and his community as Islamophobic.
• The targeted harassment of H3 Show employees online.

• Attempts to interfere with the H3 Show’s sponsors via mass email campaigns.
• Attempts to encourage “snarkers” to doxx the H3 Show’s location and/or go to harass the employees.
• Attempts to stop creators and artists from working with Hila Klein’s clothing company, Teddy Fresh (which Hila Klein alleges has resulted in artists refusing to work with her).
• Encouraging false reports to the DEA.
• Encouraging fraudulent reports to Child Protective services.

Other allegations made by either the H3Podcast community members or by H3 staff members against H3 Snark include anti-semitic brigading, hacking of staff accounts, spreading false claims that moderators were censoring/deleting superchats (paid messages on a YouTube live-stream that are highlighted) and more.

Klein believes that the false narrative online around him has come from this subreddit after his fallout with Piker and, subsequently, Piker’s community, who have labelled Klein a “Zionist” and his wife Hila a “baby-killer” for her mandatory, two-year service in the IDF (where she worked in a non-combat role from ages 18–20). In the most recent episode of the H3 show, they also placed partial blame on disgruntled fans of Klein’s first former co-host Trisha Paytas, who got her own “snark” subreddit successfully removed from Reddit.

Amid this “Zionist” accusation gaining traction on apps like Reddit and TikTok, Klein has stood surprisingly alone against this misinformation campaign. Creators like Harley Morenstein of Epic Meal Time and YouTube streamer Papa Gut have publicly expressed support for Klein but many of the voices who supported Klein in his copyright fight are now silent.

Klein claims that one of the former moderators of the subreddit has provided him with evidence for his lawsuit. Separately and publicly, another former “snarker” has come out to corroborate Klein’s criticisms of the subreddit in a video recently uploaded to YouTube, but the fight is far from over.

In the last two weeks, Klein has discussed on air at least two mainstream media articles that covered the story inaccurately, using talking points that originated in the snark subreddit itself, like conflating a sub-poena with doxxing or confusing the issue by describing Klein suing specific moderators who were cross-posting to multiple subreddits as Klein suing those subreddits directly — both misrepresentations which have led to more criticism of Klein online.

“Nobody does it like us”

Ironically, part of the problem for Klein is the sheer amount of content the H3 Show produces weekly. Each week, the show produces three public live shows between 3–5 hours in length and one members-only live episode up to two hours long. Their annual subathon has previously hit the 8-hour mark, and Leftovers was an extra 2–3 hours of content a week on top of this gruelling schedule. This content volume provides seemingly unlimited opportunities for clips to be clipped out of context and, conversely, too high a barrier to entry for people to verify Klein’s beliefs themselves, leaving only the dedicated H3 “foot soldiers” to counter the swell of misinformation across multiple platforms.

“I’m going to war. I’m already at war”

Klein reported on the H3 Show that he has reported the behaviour and posts of the “snarkers” to Reddit multiple times but Reddit “doesn’t give a fuck”. He posted on his Instagram story that he was applying for permits to protest the offices of Reddit and threatened on the show that he would go to San Francisco and broadcast from outside their offices to get their attention. Klein has also said that his detractors should “just wait” until the lawsuit is released before making up their minds.

The Klein’s first landmark victory came in a case where copyright law had been used as a weapon to silence them as creators, and they set a precedent for fair use that has already been referenced in subsequent lawsuits (including one against Klein himself). If they were to win this lawsuit, it would be another landmark case for the treatment of creators online. Whether Klein stands alone or not, it seems he is not going to stop setting legal precedents for the protection of online creators.