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MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

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Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#111

Post by electroly »

password54321 wrote: post #70
jjice wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about him, but he does lots of stuff about bringing water to places in Africa and curing blindness or deafness as well from what I've seen. Not sure of the ratio of what to what.

This is not how you judge character. Character is what you do when you have nothing to gain or even something to lose. These are merely performances for YouTube videos that help his brand and generate millions of views. Adults at least should be aware of this, because this is how you get scammed.

OP never used the word "character." They asked about good deeds, which appears to be about the action, whereas character is about the intention of the person. If MrBeast cured your blindness and he did it solely to make money and doesn't care about you at all, you still got your blindness cured. If I volunteer at the soup kitchen just to meet women, I have failing character but I still did the good deed. This is the MrBeast dilemma: what are we to conclude when the two are in opposition? What does it mean when someone does a good deed in order to benefit from it themselves? Is that a win-win situation, or is it bad? Does it completely negate the good deed? These are generally unsettled questions in our culture.

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#112

Post by frakt0x90 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #88
anukin wrote: post #72

I believe trusting any person whose incentive is to take money from you is not a prudent decision. This happens a lot if you make your purchase decisions based on influenzas promoting certain items.

To be fair that is a lot of professions: lawyers, accountants, doctors, dentists, car mechanics. All could advise you need a service you don’t really need but maximises their revenue.

Except a decent number of those examples have legally binding oaths not to screw you. And if they are found to have screwed you, are barred from their profession and have to pay you a lot of money. Maybe that should be more common.

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#113

Post by ddtaylor »

Luckily my children have all avoided these specific scammers, Mr Beast, Logan Paul, etc. But I keep my eye on the space a bit and I am appalled at how common and easy it is for these grifters to scam children.

Almost all of the content I have seen become popular have been highly toxic "relationships" with their audience. It's happening and pretty bad for non-children content, but it's happening worse and shouldn't be happening at all for childrens content.

I mean, we get it, they are a high-margin audience traditionally. Selling garbage to kids makes big bucks. Kids are dumb and they buy stupid things for non-existent reasons. That's why traditionally we have had more laws to protect them and been more vigilant about it. It seems like we've seriously slipped and just kind of thrown our hands in the air and concluded "I guess kids have to get scammed over and over"

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#114

Post by pityJuke »

dragonwriter wrote: post #34
pityJuke wrote: post #3

As far as I can see this is a non-Governmental non-profit doing this. So it has no legal merit. Can’t tell if this is the ad industry attempting to self-regulate? The Wikipedia articles are quite mealy. I do tend to agree with the findings, regardless.

> As far as I can see this is a non-Governmental non-profit doing this. So it has no legal merit. It has no legal weight . Lave of legal merit is a feature of a legal argument and is missing if the argument improperly represents the law, not if it comes from a source that doesn’t provide it legal weight. (Since you later say you agree with it. that is equivalent to saying that, insofar as it is a legal argument, that…

Ooo, never knew those words actually had different meanings in the legal context. Appreciate it :).

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#115

Post by magicalhippo »

asib wrote: post #40
jsheard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of MrBeast it's not even really reputation laundering, he's just an algorithm goblin who iterated through different shticks until landing on giveaways and contests as the things which consistently brought in the most clicks. I don't think he was even that rich when he started doing them, as far as I can tell his first ever prize was just two $50 iTunes gift cards while still recording in his bedroom, and…

> down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video To be fair, this is apparently table stakes for being a YouTuber at the moment. Maybe not hundreds but definitely several. Veritasium did a video [0] about how he has to do this to maintain enough viewership to keep YouTubing viable as a full-time job. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

It makes sense though. Or to put it another way, it seems odd to expect that there's always a global thumbnail optimum for a given YouTube video.

So to bring in the most views, put out different thumbnails to attract different viewers. Ideally YouTube would have support for this where you can just upload a dozen thumbnails or so, and YouTube figure out who needs to see which.

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#116

Post by AlexandrB »

serbuvlad wrote: post #84
anukin wrote: post #72

I believe trusting any person whose incentive is to take money from you is not a prudent decision. This happens a lot if you make your purchase decisions based on influenzas promoting certain items.

> I believe trusting any person whose incentive is to take money from you is not a prudent decision. I simply do not see the correlation. There are many people in the world that want to make money and do so by providing a great product at an affordable price (eg. Gabe Newell). Perhaps it is better to say you shouldn't trust people that who give you something for free to make money off you.

I think Steam gets a little too much leeway. They continue to enable "skins gambling" and recently started[1] selling "microtransactions" in the thousands of dollars to capitalize on the "skins" market. Is that a "great product at an affordable price"?

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1njds9z/counterstri...

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#117

Post by monero-xmr »

bmelton wrote: post #103
ActionHank wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've explained this all to our son at length and he's ended up fairly anti-Mr Beast. Problem is that other kids and their parents are convinced he's a swell guy and not marketing directly to them. This has been a great learning experience for our son about how the average person doesn't question what is happening or why.

Somewhere I hope there is a third kind of child who neither likes nor dislikes Mr Beast because of his content but who merely recognizes him for what he is, and opts in to the videos they seem likely to be entertained by while opting out of the videos they seem unlikely to be entertained by

My children find the videos entertaining. That’s our sum opinion of Mr Beast

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#118

Post by justforfunhere »

andsoitis wrote: post #76
Aeolun wrote: post #38

I think MrBeast is a very good way to tell my child that “not everything you see on the internet is true”, cue the “But why would he lie?”, “Because he wants you to keep watching his videos.” Even if 215M in revenue on chocolate bars suggests that they might be perfectly capable of funding all their $5K and $10k givaways.

> But why would he lie?” SPOILER - Three Body Problem (book, series on Netflix) I love the scene where the human tells the aliens that humans sometimes lie and the aliens conclude that humans can never be trusted so they break communication.

That was really good twist in the book.

It made me think a lot what a normal Trisolaran conversation or exchange of information look like? How does a civilization evolve in this case?

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#119

Post by deadbabe »

some_guy_nobel wrote: post #89
dizlexic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and this is downvoted why? giving all your money away in no way makes you a decent human or guarantees a better world. It's flawed logic. A platitude.

Please stray from the meta "why am I downvoted!". It's low-effort, reddit-esque commentary that only serves yourself. You can edit your other comment. You're being downvoted because you're not responding to the comment in earnest. The comment says, "You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world." Obviously, that implies good intention. Your contrarian take sidestep…

His logic is not flawed to anyone who thinks about it:

1. You have to be a shitty human being to become a billionaire. 2. If you give away all your money, you’re not a shitty human being. 3. But if you’re not a shitty human being, how could you have become a billionaire in the first place?

???

There is no way to win with these people.

Re: MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data

#120

Post by bryan_w »

speed_spread wrote: post #63
jjice wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about him, but he does lots of stuff about bringing water to places in Africa and curing blindness or deafness as well from what I've seen. Not sure of the ratio of what to what.

Whatever he does is for show first and foremost and only. Whatever benefits other people gain in the process is always less than what he will gain from the views. It's very much not a charity although he sells it like one.

Is there no such thing as a win-win situation?
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