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MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data
- theZilber 1y agoNo surprise there. Good thing some officials try and do something about it.
- _zoltan_ 1y ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 1y agoSo?
- thrance 1y agoNot really, no. There is extensive documentation showing his charity is way less than it appears to be, and selling overpriced unhealthy garbage to children negates what little goodwill he may have gained through it, in my book.
- jon-wood 1y agoSo if you donate money to charity then you get a pass on obeying the law and general morals? Is this like indulgences from the Pope? How much does a murder cost?
- dylan604 1y agoWell, yes, actually. That does seem to be the way of the world. Look how many 1%ers only make donations based on PR recommendations to keep their image in good standing. Funny you made a Pope joke, but it is common for people attending the Church to pay donations for absolution. As for your murder cost question, I guess that depends on which ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune you replied.
- gameman144 1y ago> but it is common for people attending the Church to pay donations for absolution 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)
- mouse_ 1y agoIn a Mister Burns sorta way, I guess
- freedomben 1y agoThat giant disc to block out the sun to increase power consumption was pretty genius though
- shit_game 1y agoFalling for PR and advertising is a moral failing by which you are not even bothering to consider the reality of the situation.
- buellerbueller 1y agoThat is just effective altruism by another name.
- bcrosby95 1y agoIf 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.
- uselesswords 1y agoYea 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
- ceejayoz 1y ago> Yea but he’s not exactly going around randomly punching people in the face is he? I mean, not directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MrBeast 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."
- bcrosby95 1y agoActions 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.
- doublerabbit 1y agoNo. He has no compassion nor authenticity for what he does. 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 1y agoHe gained money for those good things through fraud https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I
- semiquaver 1y agoNot officials. BBB is essentially Angie’s list.
- dylan604 1y agoThat's strange to me that you'd compare something that's been around longer to the thing that's more recent in this way
- ryandrake 1y agoThe point is that despite their deliberately confusing decision to have the word "Bureau" in their name, they have absolutely nothing to do with the government or anything official. They are as official as JD Power, Consumer Reports or Yelp. I wonder how many millions of people continue to be fooled by their deceptive name?
- dylan604 1y agoFederal Express is not part of the federal anything, yet nobody is confused by that.
- lesuorac 1y agoI'm sure people are confused by that. People get confused that the Chamber of Commerce isn't a government body.
- em-bee 1y agoeven more so as in some countries and industries membership is mandatory. but also, delegating certain responsibilities to non-govenment bodies does happen too. these then have quasi governmental authority.
- strangescript 1y agothis made me laugh
- pityJuke 1y agoAs 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.
- b3lvedere 1y agohttps://bbbprograms.org/about?faq=%5B_IsBBBNationalProgramsapartoftheBBB1%2C_Whatisindustryselfregulation2%5D https://bbbprograms.org/about?faq=%5B_IsBBBNationalProgramsa... 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.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> 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 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.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y ago> Lave of legal merit Lack?
- pityJuke 1y agoOoo, never knew those words actually had different meanings in the legal context. Appreciate it :).
- its-summertime 1y agoProbably should use the original title in some form, which makes it clear its not a legal judgement
- latexr 1y agoThe original title is almost double the maximum length for HN titles, and it’s confusingly dry. “Children's Advertising Review Unit” does sound like it could be a government entity. I do agree the current title could be slightly misleading, but hopefully there is a middle ground. I don’t have a suggestion offhand, but if you do, HN moderators do tend to take user suggestions into account in these cases.
- pyaamb 1y agois there a name for the phenomenon where you get so tired of seeing someones face pop up over and over and over that you start to hate the person and despite their good deeds feel no remorse for them when they end up in trouble?
- smcl 1y agoWhen it comes to people that wealthy, the money they're using for their "good deeds" are the bare minimum they think they need to get you off their case. So when you say "I don't think someone should be a billionaire, that means something has gone seriously wrong" they can point to how he filmed himself giving a homeless guy a house.
- jsheard 1y agoIn 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 after that it wasn't long until nearly all of his content revolved around giveaways. 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 https://x.com/Creator_Toolbox/status/1783995589543227402
- asib 1y ago> 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
- 1y ago
- exabrial 1y agoLOL. Just wait until you see TikTok, SnapChat, Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.
- BanazirGalbasi 1y agoThis is whataboutism. Just because they are also doing it doesn't mean its okay to do at all. It just means that Mr. Beast is the one being focused on here, and that other organizations will have to wait their turn.
- exabrial 1y agoI like to call it "Selective Enforcement"
- Aeolun 1y agoI 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.
- freedomben 1y agoIt really is remarkable how credulous kids are for these things, especially for some reason Mr. Beast. Good, but painful, lesson for them
- pluc 1y agoNot really. Algorithmic pushes have made it look like if it's popular, it's credible. This credibility is entirely engineered. Same reason why kids die from TikTok challenges.
- wmichelin 1y agoThe way this is written makes it sound like you think there's an algorithm saying "if bad person: then boost". 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.
- soco 1y agoOne could argue though, that the idea of abusing human brains weaknesses like "engagement" is the problem here, and a ranking algorithm is just the implementation du jour of the basic evil concept.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> The way this is written makes it sound like you think there's an algorithm saying "if bad person: then boost". Not so directly, but that's the effective result.
- DoneWithAllThat 1y agoWhy is the title of the post here on HN so substantially different from the actual press release? The HN post tries to make it personal, claiming an individual is doing it, while the press release (correctly) refers to the companies. That seems an impotent distinction that the HN headline carefully erases.
- wasabi991011 1y agoYou can email the mods to let them know, they are pretty responsive
- bayarearefugee 1y agoI guess its good that this is drawing some light on the subject, but nothing will happen. 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.
- SilverElfin 1y agoIt’s funny how he’s admired by Chamath and other Silicon Valley types for his entrepreneurship or good deeds or whatever when the core of how his channel works is deceiving viewers https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I
- jofla_net 1y agoYeah people can barely see past the length of their own nose. Its a marketing experiment basically. I think a bunch of people coalesced to answer the question. "So, how could we completely wipe the leaderboard in terms of views/attention and dethrone an entire cohort of competitors in the quest for dominance over people's attention?" In the process they completely pulled out all stops, if it bleeds it leads, save the children, high risk stunts, and psychological knee jerks. Out of nowhere they play minecraft too? Of course, its popular so, why not. The ends justifies the means. Of course, all influencers do this to a point, but none are so systematic, diversified and approach the question with so many types of content.
- meindnoch 1y agoDon't you know his mission is not to disclose ads or properly collect children's data, but to make the best YOUTUBE videos?
- anukin 1y agoI 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.
- serbuvlad 1y ago> 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.
- AlexandrB 1y agoI 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/counterstrike_is_now_offering_1500_skins_sold_by/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1njds9z/counterstri...
- helsinkiandrew 1y agoTo 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.
- frakt0x90 1y agoExcept 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.
- meindnoch 1y agoCar mechanics and dentists do that all the time. I have not much experience with others.
- SilverElfin 1y agoDoes 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 https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I
- jimt1234 1y agoYou might like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c4CEVtUx1fg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c4CEVtUx1fg
- paulcole 1y ago> I Worked For MrBeast, He's A Fraud He learned from the master lol. Missing a wide-eyed surprised face thumbnail though. I mean not a lot of people are out there making "I Worked for ________, They Were Awesome & I Was the One Who Sucked" videos, right?
- archerx 1y agoI mean if you would have watched the videos you’d have seen that the points he makes are quite valid. Also you are “judging a book by its cover”.
- glenstein 1y agoI'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-speeches-weave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/01/us/elections/trump-speech...
- lloydatkinson 1y agoThere’s going to be a big controversy about him one day and his evil will be shown, mark my words.
- nanna 1y agoEvil is a very strong word.
- posda999 1y agoIt’s not that strong. Evil isn’t just genocide. It would be evil of me to go around leaving trays full of beer outside just to drown slugs in them. It would be evil of me to shove razors into candy apples and hand them out at Halloween. Not all evil has to be some grand world-level conspiracy and it can still be evil.
- knicholes 1y agoApples on Halloween are evil enough without the razor blades
- reaperducer 1y agoApples on Halloween are evil enough without the razor blades Not as evil and Mary Janes. Or five pennies tied up in string.
- lloydatkinson 1y agoYes, it's why I chose it.
- nitwit005 1y agoHe has a controversy section in his wikipedia page with seven entries in it, and I assume that's leaving out smaller ones.
- PaulKeeble 1y agoPretty much every Youtube channel has at one point or another failed to disclose advertising. For a good while they were all doing it and sponsored videos containing sponsored content were entirely undeclared. Its a lot less common now presumably there is some enforcement now but I still see it quite often.
- herni 1y agoMrBeast is not just a YouTube channel but a huge business/brand and should be held accountable at much higher standards.
- AlexandrB 1y agoI disagree that that standards should be higher - just the penalties. Small YouTubers shouldn't be able to get away with being corporate mouthpieces without declaration just because of their size.
- throwracists 1y ago[dead]
- esaym 1y agoShut it down!
- efilife 1y agoI hate this wording. Failure implies that he tried to, while he didn't even think about it
- bluehatbrit 1y agoI 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.
- efilife 1y agoI agree with your disagreement. It was more of "he didn't even think about following the rules"
- pseudalopex 1y ago[flagged]
- efilife 1y agoYes.
- pseudalopex 1y agoNo.[1] [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/failure-to-do https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/failu...
- ddtaylor 1y agoLuckily 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"
- braiamp 1y agoThis 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.2024.0838?journalCode=mksc 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.
- cowLamp 1y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zU7sV4bJE&pp=ygUZY29wcGEgZmlucyBzaWxpY29uIGNhbGxleQ%3D%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zU7sV4bJE&pp=ygUZY29wcGEgZml...
- duxup 1y agoI have a potentially silly question. Let's say I'm a jerk and I improperly collect children's data. Is this data valuable to me in some way?
- Drblessing 1y agoIs this news? He's been running unlicensed lotteries on his youtube for almost a decade now.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago"Right now, however, Beast Industries is hemorrhaging money. It's had three years of losses, including more than $110 million in 2024. The viral videos account for all of it, overwhelming the profits from Feastables [a convenience store that "pulls in more than $200 million a year"]. Donaldson has been spending between $3 million and $4 million on every video he produces for the main YouTube channel, most of which lose money. In 2023, Beast spent $10 million to $15 million shooting videos it never released to the public because they weren't up to its standards." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/youtube-star-mrbeast-is-building-an-entertainment-empire https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-09-22/youtube-s... AI summary: "Creator" loses money due to production costs while third party intermediary "platform" (middleman) Google, twice convicted cybercriminal organisation, makes money by auctioning, selling, delivering and monitoring online ads, then taking a cut of advertising spend