Here are my thoughts on the H3H3 vs iDubbbz lawsuit situation and Moist Critical's coverage of it:
First, I want to preface this by saying that, contrary to what I'm going to say next, I do actually agree with Charlie when he gets mad at people for saying that he "avoids certain topics". At the end of the day, YouTubers are allowed to make videos on whatever subjects interest them; they don't have an obligation to listen to morons online like Denims, Hasan, and iDubbbz who bash them for not discussing certain leftist political topics (or any topic, for that matter) that they think "should" be discussed.
I completely get that. So, the following is a little bit of a nitpick: it just irks me that Charlie seems to be pretty selective about what topics he chooses to cover. Charlie, in almost all of his videos (barring a few noteworthy ones in my mind), is completely in the right. His points are completely valid. However, I dislike that he mostly just talks about situations where right-wingers are clearly in the wrong and leftists are clearly in the right, and not the other way around. Again, I have nothing against Charlie being left-leaning; I am also that way. However, it irks me that he rarely covers egregious things the left does.
I know Charlie covered the Hasan dog shocking situation, but that is pretty much the only case I can recall over the last year where he crossed into that territory. Almost every other video is either about the Trump administration, the Epstein files, AI slop, corporate predators, or scalpers. Again, he's almost always right in these videos. But, I wish he more frequently discussed instances where the left is completely in the wrong (e.g. when they bullied Emiru for not wanting to give her opinion on a political topic she hasn't researched extensively, or when they bashed gamers for getting paternal feelings off of Pragmata, or when Hasan acted like a manchild in his beef with ShoeOnHead, etc.) It does almost feel like Charlie somewhat avoids those topics. Again, I'm okay with that; moreover, there is a chance that these particular dramas are ones he didn't follow. However, having watched him for years and having followed general online discourse, it does feel like there is somewhat of a selective bias in the topics he chooses to cover.
With all that being said, I think Charlie was completely correct in the coverage of this particular situation: Ethan is being a hypocrite by only going after Ian and not Destiny when Ian clearly stated that he didn't believe in what Destiny said. Even if Destiny were joking, in what world is it considered defamation to just bring up such a joke on your stream and say you don't agree with it? Is it just that it was put on the stream for a few hours? Yes, that was extremely irresponsible behavior from Ian, but anyone with an eyeball can tell that it's a Discord message from Destiny, and it makes no sense for that to be less of a ground for a defamation lawsuit than what Ian did, which is exactly the point he was making.
Charlie talked about that for 36 minutes, and he was in the right, but I don't understand why he didn't also discuss how the snark community who called CPS on Ethan started their degenerate behavior because Denims brought someone on to her stream who said that Ethan's children live in an environment of feces. Denims is a close friend of Ian's whom he had cameo in his Content Cop on Ethan. That should have been a major point to make against Ian, but Charlie avoided it entirely (or he was unaware of it, though I somewhat doubt it considering the fact that he researched this drama for 3 hours).
Moreover, Charlie used the argument of "it seems that the Internet is only okay with bad things when they happen to people they dislike (like Ian), and not people they like". That is 100% valid and something I have preached about for years. But that is the exact same criticism you can make against Ian. Ian made a video 3 years ago talking about how he regretted his Content Cop series because they resulted in hate and harassment being sent towards other people, and Charlie discussed that topic in multiple videos. Only 2 years later, however, Ian made a Content Cop on Ethan, which probably did the exact same thing he had suddenly become against when he developed "empathy". So, once again, "No bad actions; only bad targets" is a perfectly valid criticism to make against Ethan in this case, but it should also have been made on Ian when he released his Content Cop video last year.
Okay, after that long segment on Charlie's coverage, I want to talk about the actual drama itself. I think this is, once again, a case of Ethan being a complete moron who somehow makes the bad guys look good. Think about it: Ethan has been in major beefs with Keemstar, Hasan, Denims, and iDubbbz, who are some of the worst people on the Internet. Yet, in almost every case, he ended up acting terminally online and took it too far, causing his position to be less valid and giving his enemies good reasons to get mad. Examples include when he tried to go after Keemstar's sponsors, when he filed copyright claims against various creators for reacting to his content even though he has battled a few equally invalid copyright lawsuits in the past, and now, when he's suing Ian for defamation for completely baseless reasons.
H3H3 continues to be as insufferable as he was 6 years ago. He hasn't grown. He hasn't become smarter. He's just as dumb and vindictive as he used to be, and he always drags various dramas on to unnecessary extremes, causing them to lose any meaning they had in the first place.