For more than two years, Philip Markoff has made YouTube videos detailing his own struggles with drug use and the steps addicts can take in order to get clean. Markoff, who is known online as the Crazy Ginger Kid (or CG Kid for short), has used a combination of knowledge, frankness, and empathy to gain a considerable following of more than 42,000 YouTube subscribers, but he now plans to to shift his online video presence to his personal website. The reasoning behind his move will sound familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to YouTube over the past year or so: Thanks to its references to drugs, the CG Kid channel received multiple automated content strikes from the video site, putting it in danger of termination.

Markoff, who spent several years hooked on various drugs before coming clean, often discusses his under-the-influence experiences, in order to better educate his viewers...