MrBeast Failed to Disclose Ads and Improperly Collected Children's Data
84 comments
·September 23, 2025Aeolun
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.
ActionHank
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.
SilverElfin
I just pass on this video from a former Mr Beast employee that tends to open people’s eyes up. Mr Beast has tried every tactic to bury and suppress this. In particular deleting all mention of it on any social media where his team can delete comments / replies.
andsoitis
> But why would he lie?”
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.
freedomben
It really is remarkable how credulous kids are for these things, especially for some reason Mr. Beast. Good, but painful, lesson for them
tinco
It's not just kids. MrBeast had me convinced he has a perfectly good business model making more money than he gives away without having to pull shady things. And with me plenty of reasonable adults judging from his interactions with public figures.
guerrilla
I think it's awesome that you can admit that kind of thing. You make the world a little better with that.
_fat_santa
> remarkable how credulous kids are for these things
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.
mikepurvis
To be fair, it's been like this forever.
"not a flying toy"
abfan1127
Kids? how many people try and pay IRS debt with Apple Gift Cards? How many people just dumbly trust sales people? Its best they learn at this early age rather than later in life when they grifted for $1000s.
hapidjus
Cut out the middle man. Scam you own kids to teach them a lesson…
pluc
Not 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
The 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.
pityJuke
As 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.
dragonwriter
> 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
> Lave of legal merit
Lack?
b3lvedere
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.
daedrdev
Yeah the bbb continues to act like a federal agency even though its just a private group
anukin
I 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
> 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.
its-summertime
Probably should use the original title in some form, which makes it clear its not a legal judgement
latexr
The 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.
DoneWithAllThat
Why 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
You can email the mods to let them know, they are pretty responsive
lloydatkinson
There’s going to be a big controversy about him one day and his evil will be shown, mark my words.
nanna
Evil is a very strong word.
bayarearefugee
I 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
It’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
pyaamb
is 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?
dotnet00
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.
seydor
This is not an era for long-term effort. This is about moving very fast breaking things and growing as fast as possible , so that when it all goes bust you can still leave with a cushy fortune. This culture is everywhere now, from arts to business
highwaylights
What good deeds?
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?
jjice
I don't know much about him, but he does lots of stuff about bringing water to places in Africa and curing blindness or deafness as well from what I've seen. Not sure of the ratio of what to what.
password54321
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.
speed_spread
Whatever he does is for show first and foremost and only. Whatever benefits other people gain in the process is always less than what he will gain from the views. It's very much not a charity although he sells it like one.
Workaccount2
The reeks of someone who has watched clout-chasing rage bait videos on Mr. Beast, but never actually watched Mr. Beast.
squigz
I'm confused. Is your problem the giving away of cars, or that the receiver's friends don't also get cars?
password54321
That's just your intuition telling you the person you are seeing doing "good deeds" is actually shady and a fraud.
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.
gosub100
On a related note, I'm terrified of typing his name into search or watching any of his videos because once yt thinks I'm interested in the "topic" I'll never be able to get rid of his face from my recommended videos or news suggestions. I have his channel blocked but I suspect that if you watch a blocked channel voluntarily they will treat it as an unblock.
mlinhares
I've been overly aggressive blocking channels on youtube whenever i click on shit like that by accident and my recommendations are mostly safe.
pyaamb
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the feedback he's receiving right now. Just saying whatever you want to call this phenomena, its what i'm experiencing. He would have been a lot more likeable if he wasn't so aggressive in self promotion but I've heard him boast about it on podcasts and I think he knows what he was doing
nurettin
Is it similar to being tired of people suggesting that influencers who abuse the powerty porn trope have somehow done a good thing?
exabrial
LOL. Just wait until you see TikTok, SnapChat, Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.
BanazirGalbasi
This 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.
theZilber
No surprise there. Good thing some officials try and do something about it.
semiquaver
Not officials. BBB is essentially Angie’s list.
wmeredith
I think it's more accurate to say that The Better Business Bureau is Yelp from the 1910s.
dylan604
That'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
The 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?
strangescript
this made me laugh
_zoltan_
I mean he is also doing a lot of good things, does he not?
bcrosby95
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.
uselesswords
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
jon-wood
So 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
Well, 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.
SilverElfin
He gained money for those good things through fraud
mouse_
In a Mister Burns sorta way, I guess
freedomben
That giant disc to block out the sun to increase power consumption was pretty genius though
doublerabbit
No. 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.
buellerbueller
That is just effective altruism by another name.
thrance
Not 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.
ceejayoz
So?
meindnoch
Don't you know his mission is not to disclose ads or properly collect children's data, but to make the best YOUTUBE videos?
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