Shane Dawson announced that he would return to YouTube a year after a reckoning over racist, offensive content

• Shane Dawson said on Instagram that he was planning on eventually returning to YouTube videos.
• "I promise I'm not going to abandon my channel after 15 years of creating," he wrote.
• The former "King of YouTube" hasn't posted a video since a 2020 reckoning over offensive content.

Shane Dawson, one of YouTube's most controversial stars, announced his intent to eventually return to his channel in an Instagram post on Wednesday.

Dawson, 32, has been largely silent online since July 2020, when he faced a reckoning after the resurfacing of some older content in which he joked about pedophilia, used racial slurs, and did blackface.

Since last summer, Dawson has vastly cut down on his online appearances, staying mildly in public view by posting about his personal life on Instagram, like commemorating the death of his dog and occasionally posting on his Instagram story. He has also appeared on his fiancé Ryland Adams' podcast and YouTube channel.

Dawson has not posted a video on his main YouTube channel, which currently has 20.4 million subscribers, since June 26, 2020.

Wednesday's Instagram post marks the first time the once-"King of YouTube" formally announced his intent to return to his channel.

"I know I haven't posted a video in a long time and I promise it's not because I don't want to," Dawson wrote in the caption of the post, saying that he's been "re-evaluating" his life over the course of the past year.

"I'm just trying to stay in a good mindset and be happy. I promise I'm not going to abandon my channel after 15 years of creating," he wrote.

YouTube suspended monetization on Dawson's three YouTube channels last summer after a social-media uproar over his past jokes about pedophilia, use of the "N-word," and YouTube appearances dressed in blackface, among other racist content.

The demonetization also came after Jaden and Jada Pinkett Smith publicly called out Dawson in June 2020 after a video resurfaced online in which he pretended to masturbate to a poster of an 11-year-old Willow Smith.

The most recent video on Dawson's main channel is an apology video published amid that controversy last June. In it, he said that he was "willing to lose everything" in order to account for his old content and that he would never inappropriately sexualize a child.

Dawson did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.