Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has allegedly been promoting the first directly posted video on the platform by Jimmy Donaldson, popularly known as MrBeast.
What Happened: Last weekend, MrBeast, a well-known YouTuber, posted a video titled “$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car!!!” on X, saying that he intends to test “how much ad revenue a video on X would make.”
Now, X users have reported seeing this video, labeled as a “test,” multiple times in their feeds without any clear “ad” or “promoted” tag. This led one user to suggest that it is an unlabeled advertisement, as it lacked the usual timestamp and ad indicators, reported Mashable.
upon closer inspection seems like it definitely is a non-disclosed ad 🤨 pic.twitter.com/7lcLarUBlZ
— █̶̳̘͛̄̃͒̄̃͜█̴͇̱̅͒̅█̵̻̣̝͒̈̄̈͝͝█̴̞̜̻̝͍̂̽͜█̷̢ (@SHL0MS) January 19, 2024
The issue of unlabeled ads on X emerged following Musk’s acquisition of the platform in October 2022 for a whopping $44 billion.
Previously, it was reported that since September last year, the platform has been displaying unlabeled ads to users without the customary “ad” or “promoted” tag. These ads do not have the usual post date seen on organic posts.
Check My Ads, an ad-tech watchdog earlier filed a complaint against X with the FTC over this labeling issue.
However, an X employee suggested that a labeled pre-roll video ad appearing before MrBeast’s video is considered as the disclosure, thus explaining the lack of an “ad” or “promoted” label on MrBeast’s post, the report noted, citing Ryan Broderick, who writes “Garbage Day” newsletter.
Per X, the MrBeast video is technically not an undisclosed ad. There is a pre-roll ad for Shopify in the video, which is labeled as such. X boosts posts containing pre-roll ads, but because the post itself is not the ad, it doesn’t have the label.https://t.co/yDQPgOyQTT pic.twitter.com/ytd8rLY8bG
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) January 19, 2024
Why It Matters: Despite the controversy, at the time of writing, the video had received over 138.4 million views on X. However, it’s likely these “views” are just impressions on the post itself…
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