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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Somewhere I hope there is a third kind of child who neither likes nor dislikes Mr Beast because of his content but who merely recognizes him for what he is, and opts in to the videos they seem likely to be entertained by while opting out of the videos they seem unlikely to be entertained by

My children find the videos entertaining. That’s our sum opinion of Mr Beast

> merely recognizes him for what he is

Haven't you seen the way his smile never touches his eyes? Anybody who recognizes MrBeast for what he is should be running in the opposite direction.

His videos are obviously entertaining until you realize (for me it was a post few years ago here) how cruel they are. With likes of Squid Game you realize it is all fake. IMO few more years and YouTube will deplatform or deboost him.

No way. As long as he brings views in, YouTube will boost him. They only care about ad money.

> 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.

Enjoyed it ans well. Ended the age of cultural exchange.

That was really good twist in the book.

It made me think a lot what a normal Trisolaran conversation or exchange of information look like? How does a civilization evolve in this case?

How would such civilization even survive to discover a wheel if it can't recognize lie or misinformation. Even animals are able to lie - that's what mimicry and camouflage is all about.

Imagination is also form of a lie. You are making stuff up in your head. Without imagination you don't have innovation. Without innovation you are stuck in cave scavenging whatever you can find.

Trisolarans did evolve under much different selection pressure that requires effective mass coordination to dehydrate when deemed necessary for civilization's survival. That would probably select for rigid adherence to rules of communication vs critically evaluating every interaction. Or else you'd get a lot of "But am I being tricked into dehydrating to steal my belongings and take my job at the sophon factory? No thanks, I'll pass."

But how would progress work like that? If you are essentially an ant colony adhering to rules, how do you want to invent anything at all? The moment when you start being different through innovation, you are not following the rigid rule system and other members of your species will kill you.

They could have evolved with lies, developed the tech, then branched off into honesty later.

That makes no sense either. Evolution means that this change happened gradually over the time. However the moment you have a group which is always honest and believes you and group which is allowed to lie, then the lying group will take over the honest group. To lie and manipulate is a massive advantage.

In general, self defense is evolutionarily necessary or you'll get wiped out. Recall the stable state of the prisoners dilemma

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.

https://youtu.be/k5xf40KrK3I

That video ended up having a bunch of factual errors though. It's a definite mix of real problems and rumours/gossip that comes across as someone having an axe to grind with their former employer. I don't particularly like Mr. Beast or his schtick (probably too old to find him appealing, honestly) but this isn't a slam dunk. The deleting comments/replies thing is basic large corporation behaviour, which is what Mr. Beast Inc. is a the end of the day.

> I think MrBeast is a very good way to tell my child that “not everything you see on the internet is true”

Also a good way to teach your child that being a fraud can make you a lot of money.

Sadly.

The best frauds have a dash of truth to them. Mr. Beast is one of those.

It really is remarkable how credulous kids are for these things, especially for some reason Mr. Beast. Good, but painful, lesson for them

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.

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.

One 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.

> 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.

You're blowing right past the question of whether the result of successful dark patterns is legitimate engagement. It's a computer. It's got nothing better to do than run a better algorithm to avoid that outcome.

I didn’t read it that way. Algorithms select for optimizing engagement. People whose brains have not fully developed are incapable of reliably distinguishing fiction presented as fact vs reality, especially when there is intentional deception. Combine those and you get engaging content that can influence a portion of the population with limited defense mechanisms against it.

This is also why minors can’t sign contracts, why broadcasts television used to only show more mature content after prime time, and all of the other ways children have historically been protected.

This isn’t about capitalism among equal parties.

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.

I think it's awesome that you can admit that kind of thing. You make the world a little better with that.

Do you say his giveaways are fake?

I mean, it was obvious to me they couldn’t have been able to pull $10k of money per video at the start. Maybe now, with 400M subscribers that would work just fine.

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.

Cut out the middle man. Scam you own kids to teach them a lesson…

"I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make 'em sharp."

- William Rockefeller Sr.

> 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.

To be fair, it's been like this forever.

"not a flying toy"

The thing about grifters, scammers and con artists is that they’re professionals.

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