Do we like them?

Do we like Zoe Sugg?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and a long run of mental health work, with one real stain in old tweets that she has since apologised for.

Zoe Sugg started out as a blogger in 2009 and grew into one of Britain's biggest YouTubers, so Zoella was a household name for a generation of teens. She then branched out into a beauty range and books, which made her one of the most commercially successful creators of her era.

The harm check is where the asterisk comes from. In November 2017 PinkNews reported that old tweets of hers from 2010 and 2011 had resurfaced, including one mocking gay men and one using a slur about trans people. Fans who saw her as an LGBTQ+ ally were upset, and she apologised and said she was sorry if she had offended anyone.

That apology matters most if what she's done since lines up with it. In the coverage we could see, nothing from her since fits the same pattern, and there's no sign of campaigning against anyone's rights, conspiracy theories or an anti-vax or climate-denial slide. We couldn't open the full articles, though, so that is what the search results show, not a deep dive.

On the good side, Mind named her its first digital ambassador in 2014. She used her channel to talk openly about anxiety, and the #DontPanicButton campaign was built around that. Her birthday fundraiser for Mind also reportedly raised thousands of pounds.

She has also had her run-ins with the rules. In 2020 the UK advertising watchdog took issue with an Instagram Story that wasn't clear enough about being a paid affiliate post, and it told her to make sponsored posts clearer. That's a labelling slip, not a character flaw.

The recent news is mostly silence. She stopped posting at the start of 2026, and reporting since has stayed in guesswork about why. Planning documents apparently tie her and her partner to a donkey sanctuary, which, if it's right, is a fairly gentle way to spend a break.