The fix is in, apparently.
MrBeast, the most popular creator on YouTube, uploaded his latest YouTube video to Elon Musk’s X for the first time. According to MrBeast, he was “curious” about “how much ad revenue” he would make from the upload, so he uploaded the video directly to the platform as a “kontrol.”
Now, X users are reporting that MrBeast’s post containing the video upload is being forced into their feed multiple times a day as an unlabeled advertisement.
https://twitter.com/SHL0MS/status/1748336871568994403″ target=”_blank” title=”(opens in a new window)” rel=”noopener
An X employee claimed to Ryan Broderick of the Garbage Day newsletter in a recent report that because there’s a labeled pre-roll video ad that plays before MrBeast’s video, the company considers that to be the disclosure. This, according to the X employee, explains why there’s no “ad” or “promoted”affixed to the actual Mr Beast post itself.
That doesn’t make any sense. The pre-roll video ad is a completely different advertisement. If viewers are being served MrBeast’s post in their feed and it isn’t organically showing up — and the aforementioned attributes point to it being served via X’s advertising platform — then MrBeast’s post containing the video is a completely separate advertisement, and needs to be labeled as such.
In fact, as some other X users have pointed out, older versions of the X app indeed show MrBeast’s post with the “promoted”which means it is being served to users via X’s advertising platform.
https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1748140509590086055″ target=”_blank” title=”(opens in a new window)” rel=”noopener
It’s almost impossible to tell how much MrBeast will rake in due to how X’s creator monetization program works. X users can only participate in the monetization program if they are paying subscribers to X’s monthly subscription programs like X Premium or X Premium+. In addition, X only pays creators for ads that appear in the replies to their posts. Furthermore, only impressions from other paying X Premium subscribers count towards monetization.
As Mashable özgü previously reported, X’s payout amounts to each creator seems completely arbitrary. X employees have shared that users can’t really calculate how much they’ll actually make as hisse isn’t determined by a set number of views like they are on other platforms. Those who have made the most on X appear to mostly consist of Musk’s personal favorite political commentators, Tesla fans, and meme accounts.
And, of course, we’ve yet to mention that Musk himself promoted MrBeast’s video to his 169 million followers.
MrBeast özgü promised to share just how much he makes from X’s monetization program from this kontrol. So, we’ll soon find out the answer to that question. Whatever MrBeast makes though, it seems clear that X put its fingers heavily on the scale to make sure circumstances favored a massive view count.