ExTwitter Accused Of Secretly Boosting Mr. Beast Video With Undisclosed Ad Placements

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the anyone-inform-the-ftc? dept

It’s kind of pathetic how desperate Elon Musk is to convince people that ExTwitter is a good platform for posting their video content. I assume it’s a perfectly okay place to post videos, but it’s hardly where most people go to watch videos, and Elon may discover sooner or later just how difficult it is to change the overall perception.

In recent weeks, Elon’s taken to begging big influencers to post on ExTwitter and retweeting misleading tweets from other users, claiming that ExTwitter pays out way more than other sites (there are many, many asterisks associated with the payments ExTwitter actually pays out).

But one of his big targets has been the YouTube super influencer, MrBeast. If you somehow don’t know of MrBeast, he’s a massive YouTube star who makes elaborate and expensive videos. And Elon has been bugging him to post on ExTwitter basically ever since he took over the company.

Just a few weeks ago, MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) responded to the latest request to upload his videos to ExTwitter by pointing out that he didn’t think the revenue share from ExTwitter could help him out. “My videos cost millions to make and even if they got a billion views on X it wouldn’t fund a fraction of it.” Ouch.

Still, just a few weeks later, MrBeast decided to test it out to see, posting a new video to ExTwitter, and saying explicitly that he wanted to see how well it performed.

Now, I’d argue that the views on the video are not the most accurate. For example, I just went to find that tweet to screenshot, and the video started playing immediately, even though I never clicked on it to play. So, I’m guessing a lot of the views are… not real.

But, either way, people are pointing out that it appears someone is juicing the views anyway, by promoting the video post as an ad… but without the (required by law) disclosure that it’s an ad. This certainly suggests that it’s being done by ExTwitter itself, rather than MrBeast directly. If it were being done by MrBeast or someone else, then it would say that it was a promoted/advertised slot. The fact that it’s hidden suggests the call is coming from inside the house.

The evidence that it’s an undisclosed ad is pretty strong. People are seeing it show up in their feeds without the time/date of the post, which is something that only happens with ads. Other tweets show that info.

Even stronger proof? If you click on the three dots next to the tweet… it says “Report ad” and “Why this ad?” which, um, is pretty damning.

Cody Johnston notes that he has refused to update his Twitter app in ages, and on the old app, it is properly designated as a “Promoted” tweet, which is how ads were normally disclosed.

Elon is denying that he’s done anything to goose the numbers, but the evidence suggests someone at the company is doing so, whether or not Elon knows about it.

Of course, the evidence still suggests otherwise. Meanwhile, Ryan Broderick was told by an ExTwitter employee that they don’t have to label promoted tweets that have videos because there’s also a pre-roll video and that is disclosed. Of course, that… makes no sense at all. Those are two totally separate things, and not labeling the promoted tweet is a likely FTC violation (and potentially fraudulent in misrepresenting to people how much they might make from videos posted to the platform).

Anyway, beyond raising even more questions about how (and how much) ExTwitter is actually paying content creators, it seems like this might just create a whole new headache for the company.

Filed Under: advertisements, disclosure, elon musk, ftc, mr beast, revenue share
Companies: twitter, x