Mr Branding: X Forced To Defend Itself After Being Accused Of ‘Shadow Boosting’ Mr. Beast’s First Video On The App

Sunday, January 21, 2024

X Forced To Defend Itself After Being Accused Of ‘Shadow Boosting’ Mr. Beast’s First Video On The App

The world’s most popular YouTuber Mr. Beast is famous for a reason. And that has to do with the fact that his content continues to entertain the masses. Perhaps a reason why could be linked to how large of a budget he allocates to keep his viewers engaged.

But a recent finding on X had people alleging it continues to soak up profits from Mr. Beast's first video upload by marketing it as an undisclosed advertisement. This forced Musk’s firm to step in and refute the claims that this was far from the truth. But more research into the matter shows that while it might be right, it’s still lying in terms of how data is being deceivingly displayed to the public.

upon closer inspection seems like it definitely is a non-disclosed ad

🤨 pic.twitter.com/7lcLarUBlZ
— █̶̳̘͛̄̃͒̄̃͜█̴͇̱̅͒̅█̵̻̣̝͒̈̄̈͝͝█̴̞̜̻̝͍̂̽͜█̷̢ (@SHL0MS) January 19, 2024

This past week, we saw several users on X state how the content was visible across streams with the same old advertisement disclosures found in the drop-down menu, despite this not being clearly marketed as ‘promoted content’. Meanwhile, others have gone on to speculate more on this front including the platform marketing the post to several people to try and boost the count of viewers and therefore make greater profits as it seems to be an enticing endeavor on the app.

But the platform clarified how the disclosure in question here is linked to pre-roll ads across the clip and not the video itself. So as per those claims, it is not really shadow boosting the content but we do feel it’s doing everything in its power to make the video aware to the masses. After all, making the world-famous YouTuber happy would be a huge marketing achievement of the potential for other creators in the industry.

However, all of the positives would be cut out against the negatives by not rolling out the right stats related to the new clip. This was witnessed through an exchange of words with one fan account on X, suggesting how the video gets more views on the app. Then we saw one of the company’s own workers double down on the claims, adding how these view counts are better than what’s on display here. This is because YouTube counts other view types which X may not.

But that is very unfair comparison (or at least cherry picking claim). The view count for X posts includes those counted each time it’s displayed on the users’ feed. Whether the user sees it or not, that does not matter and it’s crazy. That should not be designated as view counts because YouTube counts views when the viewer seen clips at least for the first 30 seconds.

So as you can see, the video streaming giant’s count for views is so much more indicative of the real interest taking center stage. But for X, the view count is simply the figure allocated for post impressions. And as one can imagine, it’s much less meaningful.

The X app realizes this and its employees confirm it through replies. But to boost confusing stats in this manner and give the world the impression that it performing far better than reality is wrong for so many different reasons.

It’s quite like how billionaire Elon Musk mentions stats about the app, raising eyebrows with critics for years. Many fail to understand where and how he quotes data from when their research never indicates the same.

What is even more interesting is how Musk continues to reshare the facts like he’s the only one who knows what’s going on in terms of traffic and the rest are immature critics.

You simply cannot fool the world by quoting a small fraction of the reality and expect them to accept whatever you’re saying. It’s quite a meaningless effort for obvious reasons. Maybe it will work for the time being as X takes on more small-scale advertisers but in the long term, there are plenty of problems in terms of how authentic the facts really are.

But these views don’t matter at the end of the day if there are no advertisers present to support the brand. So many leading names in the industry continue to be hesitant in terms of rolling out their campaigns here and the chances of winning those names back are not looking great right now either.

Clearly, having income from X Premium’s users’ subscriptions is far from what’s required to save the app. In case it does not begin getting its advertising business back to where it started, we might have billions in terms of user count but that won’t stop it from working at a serious loss. What do you think?

There is a lot to think about and ponder here and being dishonest with unreliable data is not going to be the right approach, we believe.