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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

#131

Post by glenstein »

SilverElfin wrote: post #75

Does anyone remember when this person who worked for Mr Beast outed their fraudulent tactics? You couldn’t bring it up in a comment on their videos at all. They had a team continuous censoring all honest discussion on their videos. I find the whole phenomenon around Beast to be gross. https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I

I'm finding these allegations of "fraud" to be extremely convoluted and all over the map, sharing more with internet conspiracy theorizing than sober allegations of specific harms. Some of the issues in the video and elsewhere, present longstanding staples of junk food marketing (e.g. cash prizes, vacations) as if they're in the category of crimes, which is nonsense and shows no sense of proportionality.

I also think the linked video got pretty ridiculous pointing to CGI explosions or edited in buildings evidence of "faked videos" when I think, again, not crime, and not even importantly misleading in the sense people usually are talking about when talking about faked videos: e.g. bigfoot being a guy in a costume. The kind of thing I would consider violating the contract with the viewer would be something more like integrity of outcomes in competitions.

Which is to say, the community of critics are some of the worst cases of deep friend internet brain imaginable, spinning narratives in a Trump-style "weave" [0] that can't decide what the issue is, and can't differentiate between importantly different categories of harm. Most of the time it's vague characterizations of "shady" without elaboration, which itself signals the kind of vagueness that people mistakenly think constitute a completely expressed idea.

That's why this article, at least, by contrast is able to coherently articulate a harm, but even that is fringey, pertaining to pinned comments did not comply with "CARU’s Ad Guidelines’." But at least, it models what it looks like to present a coherently stated harm.

0: The Weave: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/us/elections/trump-speech...

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

#132

Post by password54321 »

wongarsu wrote: post #130
password54321 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His philantrophy videos underperform compared to his other videos, typically getting 10-30% fewer views than the worst performing video right before or after. Maybe you could argue that they aren't financially lucrative but at least help his brand. But he seems to get a lot of hate for making those videos. I suspect his brand would be much better if he stuck to making highly produced challenge and contest style video…

>His philantrophy videos underperform compared to his other videos, typically getting 10-30% fewer views than the worst performing video right before or after.

Doesn't matter. We are literally having this discussion because of the very fact that he has chosen to make these videos. This tells you how effective it is for his brand. More than likely it is a net-positive even if he does get criticism.

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

#133

Post by asib »

pests wrote: post #122
asib wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Eh, Veritasium is now majority owned by PE now (Electrify). This is why they’ve been introducing new hosts and Derek is doing more intros / voiceovers - the end goal removing reliance on the original channel owner. So does he need to do it to remain profitable or does PE need to do it to pay for all their overhead / etc?

Ah interesting, didn't know that. The video is at least 4 years old, so suppose it depends on when Derek sold. Anecdotally, I think all the new hosts came after that thumbnail video, but I couldn't say how closely the changes you mention followed.

In general, it seems this is a thing that YouTubers feel they need to do to avoid being swallowed, but the extent to which MrBeast does it could well be extreme, and thereby worthy of suspicion.

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

#134

Post by bcrosby95 »

uselesswords wrote: post #41
bcrosby95 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I go out and randomly punch someone in the face but buy a homeless person dinner, hey, I did something good, but maybe I still shouldn't have done the former.

Yea but he’s not exactly going around randomly punching people in the face is he? Lot of moral grandstanding in this thread. He’s a human being and he’s not perfect but some of these comments calling him a psychopath or sycophant are going way too far. My psychoanalysis of everyone psychoanalyzing Mr Beast would be to turn the screen off and get some fresh air

Actions have a statistical inevitability to them. I don't think it's much different than going out and randomly punching people in the face.

When you have a lot of money and influence, and you have a choice between two policies: policy A which will statistically harm 1,000 people, and policy B which will statistically harm 1,500 people, it is no different, to me, than going around randomly punching 500 people you never had to.

For some reason people give these choices a pass. I don't.

I might give Mr. Beast a bit of a pass because there might be some ignorance involved. But for most people making these decisions, that live within large corporations, I don't, because they know better, they just don't care.

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

#135

Post by amelius »

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.

> I think MrBeast is a very good way to tell my child that “not everything you see on the internet is true”

Also a good way to teach your child that being a fraud can make you a lot of money.

Sadly.

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

#136

Post by wongarsu »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #107
dotnet00 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in MrBeast's case it goes beyond just overexposure to seeming like a sketchy guy because of how hard he tries to project the image of being a good person while simultaneously flaunting his wealth. It's very reminiscent of many crypto-scammers, who flaunted their wealth and talked about wanting to help others become wealthy too, only to eventually rug pull.

He's been involved with enough actual crypto scammers that it's probably more than a superficial similarity.

He is heavily involved with both Logan Paul and KSI. And while those two haven't built their career around crypto scams the label "crypto scammer" has been used for both of them

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

#137

Post by some_guy_nobel »

deadbabe wrote: post #119
some_guy_nobel wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you quote this thread where somebody said any of that? If you can't, can you explain how you came to those conclusions? And finally, what are you trying to "win," and why? lol

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

#138

Post by bluehatbrit »

efilife wrote: post #99

I hate this wording. Failure implies that he tried to, while he didn't even think about it

I disagree, the findings clearly show it as active malice rather than naive incompetence. From their findings, the company clearly did think about this stuff and tried to tick boxes while actively going around the rules.

> In MrBeast’s 2024 Halloween sweepstakes, Feastables encouraged participants to submit up to 24 entries daily until October 30 for a chance to win $10,000, with a grand prize of $1,000,000 on Halloween Day. The ad copy stated, “$10,000 USD Daily Winner. Enter with Purchase Through October 30.” In very small print was the disclaimer, “No purchase necessary, Click below for details.” The official rules stated that participants must be at least 13 years old with parental permission and entrants under 13 are not allowed.

That shows they clearly were aware of the fact they must have a "no purchase necessary" option, because they added it into the small print. They then actively pushed the "with purchase" line everywhere else.

They knew what they should be doing and then did everything they could to do otherwise to sell more product.

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

#139

Post by lupusreal »

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

> merely recognizes him for what he is

Haven't you seen the way his smile never touches his eyes? Anybody who recognizes MrBeast for what he is should be running in the opposite direction.

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

#140

Post by braiamp »

This isn't a Mr Beast problem, it's a industry problem:

> Frontiers: How Much Influencer Marketing Is Undisclosed? Evidence from Twitter

> We study the disclosure of influencer posts on Twitter across a large set of brands based on a unique data set of over 100 million posts and a novel classification method to detect undisclosed sponsorship. Using our preferred empirical specification, we find that 96% of sponsored posts are not disclosed. This result is robust to a series of specification tests, and even a lower-bound classification still yields an undisclosed share of 82%. Despite stronger enforcement of disclosure regulations, the share of undisclosed posts decreases only slightly over time. *Compared with disclosed posts, undisclosed posts tend to be associated with young brands with a large Twitter following. Using an online survey, we find that many consumers are not able to identify sponsored content without disclosure.* Our findings highlight a potential need for further regulatory scrutiny and suggest that researchers studying influencers must account for undisclosed sponsored content.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mksc.2024.083...

Now, one could argue that Mr Beast has the means to properly disclose these issues.

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