I do tend to agree with the findings, regardless.
Indeed. It's one of those "we joined this program so now you all can see we are very committed to ensure our consumers are well protected" non-profit organisations.
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 argument does have legal merit.)
> Can’t tell if this is the ad industry attempting to self-regulate?
No, it is a non-advertising industry non-profit doing research and reporting to the public, which potentially puts political pressure on government actors (State Attorneys-General and, maybe, the FTC) to take action (it could also provide ammunition for private lawsuits, except COPPA doesn’t provide a private cause of action.)
Note that a part of COPPA regulation is a Safe Harbor provision which involves industry self-regulation and certification, but that only protects against FTC, not state, action.
Lack?
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-...
The whole operation is optimized to the gills for maximum engagement above all else, down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video: https://x.com/Creator_Toolbox/status/1783995589543227402
To be fair, this is apparently table stakes for being a YouTuber at the moment. Many 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.
What you need is some kind of platform on which you could collect those dollars. In recent history the internet has become a powerful platform and that is why we have so many more billionaires.
But what has not changed is our sensitivity to good deeds. If you’re a billionaire, giving all your wealth away is not really going to be appreciated much more than doing some highly visible good deeds that give smaller amounts of wealth away. So why do it? There is diminishing returns for good deeds. You’re better off staying a billionaire until you die, after which your wealth will be distributed anyway.
You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world. Could probably end or avoid a few wars, too. You’d certainly go into the annals of history is you eradicated poverty in whole areas of the world (which you could easily do, as a billionaire).
> It’s not that difficult to become a billionaire.
Please show us. Then give all your money away and see how that worked out. Don’t knock it until you try it. If you later regret it, that’s OK, shouldn’t be that difficult to become a billionaire again.
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 sidesteps this for no real reason: you present no argument other than being contrarian for contrarian-sake. Maybe try explaning why you think the logic is flawed.
Isn’t this the guy that gives out cars to one random person on YouTube while their friends get nothing then films the reactions for megabucks?
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.
But he is definetly flaunting something. I'd maybe label it as flaunting generosity, or the ability to change people's lifes
People tend to have a good intuition for these kind of things. Every time my alarm bells have gone off it turned out they were in fact wearing a mask.
Even if 215M in revenue on chocolate bars suggests that they might be perfectly capable of funding all their $5K and $10k givaways.
The credibility is ranking. The ranking is a function of engagement. The engagement is a function of human nature. Things delightful, shocking, or unusual usually strike that chord. Sprinkle capitalism into the mix and people become professionally delightful, shocking, or unusual.
I don't think the ranking algorithms are the problem here.
Not so directly, but that's the effective result.
- William Rockefeller Sr.
Is it though? We're talking about kids whose brains aren't fully developed yet. IMO there's a certain genius in marketing to kids, as they are far more likely to buy wholesale into what you're selling. MrBeast probably does the best job but if you look through kids Youtube there are some really shady folks out there that just make videos designed to suck kids in, and just based off their view counts you can tell they are making disgusting amounts of money off AdSense.
"not a flying toy"
This has been a great learning experience for our son about how the average person doesn't question what is happening or why.
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.
Even if MrBeast were to be investigated by a government agency for similar issues, his business links to noted Trump sycophant Chamath Palihapitiya would shield him from any consequences for his actions.
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.
Not all evil has to be some grand world-level conspiracy and it can still be evil.
theZilber•1h ago
_zoltan_•1h ago
ceejayoz•1h ago
thrance•1h ago
mouse_•1h ago
freedomben•49m ago
jon-wood•1h ago
dylan604•57m ago
gameman144•41m ago
This is not at all common and hasn't been for a few hundred years.
(That said, your point about wealthy people making big donations as a PR move is definitely as prevalent as it ever was)
shit_game•1h ago
buellerbueller•1h ago
bcrosby95•1h ago
uselesswords•50m ago
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
ceejayoz•46m ago
I mean, not directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MrBeast
"In September 2024, Donaldson was one of the subjects of a class action lawsuit that alleged widespread mistreatment, sexual harassment, and unpaid expenses and wages on his ongoing reality television series."
doublerabbit•1h ago
He's been doing it to paint an image to mask what's goes on behind the screen. He's a narcissistic psychopathic arsehole.
SilverElfin•19m ago
https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I
semiquaver•1h ago
dylan604•59m ago
ryandrake•39m ago
wmeredith•54m ago
strangescript•53m ago