Monthly Archives: January 2024

KRAKW, Poland Elon Musk has upped his war on woke by saying that diversity-oriented hiring policies are fundamentally antisemitic and discriminatory, shortly after a private visit to the Auschwitz-BirkenauNazi concentration camp.

The controversial tech billionaire was speaking at a European Jewish Association (EJA) conference in the Polish city ofKrakw, amid rising criticism that his social media platform X, formerly Twitter has allowed rampant hate speech to spread. Musk himself sparked outrage in November when hepublicly agreedwith an antisemitic tweet claiming that Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

While his trip to Poland allowed him to push back at the charges of antisemitism, he also seized the opportunity to turn his fire against one of his favorite bugbears: Diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book. Thats never a good sign, Musk told American right-wing commentator BenShapiro, who joined him on stage. Sure, diversity, equity and inclusion all sound like nice words, but what it really means is discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation and its against merit and thus I think its fundamentally antisemitic.

Musk, who confirmed that he does indeed write all of his own posts on X, has been vocal about his feelings toward diversity, equity and inclusion, including by claiming, without evidence, that diverse hiring initiatives at Boeing and United Airlines have made air travel less safe.

His comments feed into a broader debate on inclusive hiring policies, most especially on U.S. college campuses. The resignation ofHarvard President Claudine Gayover a plagiarism scandal was seized upon by Republicans, who claim top schools are examples of American institutions in the throes of a leftist political transformation. Critics argue this radical leftist culture on campuses is stoking antisemitism, and top university leaders hit heavy flak last month for their poor handling of a congressional hearing on the bullying of Jews.

On Monday, Shapiro went easy on Musk, steering the conversation towards meritocracy rather than Musks increasingly controversial social media outbursts and allowing the Tesla boss to continue his attacks on a subject he has made a great deal of mileage out of.

I think we need return to a focus on merit and it doesnt matter whether youre man, woman, what race you are, what beliefs you have, what matters is how good you are at your job or what are your skills, Musk said.

At the EJA conference a daylong summit on the rise of antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas Musk also defended X against accusations of antisemitism and hate speech, saying freedom of speech must be protected even when controversial. According to the billionaire, who cited audits without offering further details, X has the least amount of antisemitism among all social media platforms, adding that TikTok has five times the amount of antisemitism that X has.

Relentless pursuit of the truth is the goal with X, Musk said. And allowing people to say what they want to say even if its controversial, provided it does not break the law, is the right thing to do.

Musk has faced widespread criticism over the rise of disinformation and hate content since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022, criticism that intensified in the weeks following the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war last October.

The reported spread of fake and misleading content on the conflict led the EU to launch an investigation into X. And things got worse for Musk after progressive watchdog groupMedia Matterspublished a reportalleging that X had run ads for major companies next to neo-Nazi posts.

The Media Matters report and Musks endorsement of an antisemitic post sparked a backlash fromseveral public figuresand culminated in an advertiser exodus, as multiple companies pulled their adsfrom the site, including giants such as Apple, IBM, Disney and Coca-Cola. According to aNew York Times report, this could result in a loss of up to $75 million for X.

Musk has since apologized for the antisemitic post admitting he should not have replied to it and then traveled to Israel to meet with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu, in what could be seen as an apology tour.

Speaking about his visit to Israel, Musk said indoctrinated Hamas fighters have to be killed or imprisoned to prevent them from killing more Israelis. And the next step is fighting further indoctrination in Gaza, he added.

The indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to stop, Musk said. I understand the need to invade Gaza, and unfortunately some innocent people will die, theres no way around it, but the most important thing to ensure is that afterwards the indoctrination stops.

According to Gazas Health Ministry, Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks have killed over 25,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 60,000 since the attack by Hamas onOctober7, in which Israeli officials say the militant group killed over 1,200 nationals and foreigners and took 240 hostages.

Musk said the West has shifted to a mentality that equates smaller, weaker groups with goodness.

We need to stop the principle that the normally weaker party is always right, this is simply not true, Musk said. If you are oppressed or the weaker party it doesnt mean youre right.

Musk who joked multiple times that he considers himself Jew by aspiration and by association was supposed to visit the Auschwitz-BirkenauNazi concentration camp on Tuesday alongside other speakers and political leaders from the EJA conference, but he instead took a private tour of the site with his young son.

The Auschwitz Museum itself was among one of the entities that had called out Musk for failing to contain antisemitic content.

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Elon Musk: Diversity-based hiring is antisemitic - POLITICO Europe

Tech and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who caused an uproar in November by endorsing a bogus Jewish conspiracy theory on his social media site, X, is expected to head to Poland next week to take part in a panel on online antisemitism and will tour the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Vile anti-Jewish posts have continued to flourish on X, called Twitter when Musk acquired it in 2022.

Under Musks ownership, the social media platform continues to allow users to post bigoted content, including antisemitic posts, and runs ads alongside these. Some of Xs premium users, who have posted antisemitic and other bigoted content regularly, have boasted on X about earning money through its ad revenue sharing program.

Just on Friday, divisive podcaster Jason Whitlock posted on the platform an interview with E. Michael Jones, who the Anti-Defamation League describes as being an antisemitic Catholic writer. He falsely claimed that the Jews control the government and Black people. The post appeared to have been taken down later Friday.

Musks two-day visit to Poland begins Monday, one week before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, which commemorates the murders of 6 million Jews by the Germans and their accomplices during World War II, according to the European Jewish Association.

The EJA organized the visit to address the worldwide surge of antisemitism in the wake of Israels invasion of Gaza, which was in retaliation for Hamas deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Everyone acknowledges what a great threat nationalism, populism, racism, and all manifestations of xenophobia and hatred are to democracy, human rights and the E.U., Polish deputy foreign minister Andrzej Szejna said Friday, according to the official Polish Press Agency (PAP). I think this is probably the reason why Mr. Musk is among the invited guests who have confirmed their presence.

The Jerusalem Post was one of the first news outlets to report that Musk would visit Auschwitz, where most of the 1.1 million people murdered there by the German occupiers were Jews.

NBC News has reached out to Musks representatives for independent confirmation that he will visit the death camp on Tuesday, but has not yet received a response.

Todd Gutnick, a spokesperson for the ADL, which is a Jewish organization that fights antisemitism and which Musk has criticized in the past, said Musk would benefit from making the pilgrimage.

Anyone who has the opportunity to bear witness to the atrocities that took place in Auschwitz-Birkenau should go, Gutnick said. Auschwitz serves as the ultimate reminder of what can happen when a society or its leaders are consumed with antisemitism.

Musk faced accusations of antisemitism in November when he replied, You have said the actual truth to a post on X that made the false claim that Jews push hatred for white people.

Later, in the same thread, Musk went after the ADL, which had vocally criticized him and Xs management for allowing people to post anti-Jewish rants and conspiracy theories on the site.

The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel, Musk wrote. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.

The White House immediately condemned Musks posts as did the ADL.

In a visit to Israel a week later, Musk got a scolding from President Isaac Herzog, who told him, The platforms you lead, unfortunately, have a huge reservoir of hatred, hatred of Jews and antisemitism.

On that trip, the Israelis also got Musk to agree to operate his Starlink satellite internet company in Gaza only with government approval.

Previously, Musk had said he would work to bring Starlink satellite internet service to support internationally recognized aid groups in Gaza, angering Israeli officials who said Hamas would use the service to keep launching terrorist attacks against Israel.

Musk will be joined on the panel Monday by Ben Shapiro, a polarizing conservative political commentator who presided over a Sept. 28 discussion posted on X and other social media platforms in which Musk said he went to Hebrew preschool while growing up in South Africa and described himself as aspirationally Jewish.

The event is being held in a country which, before the Germans launched World War II, was home to the biggest Jewish population in Europe, and which recently ousted a conservative government that ruled Poland for eight years and had been accused by critics and the European Union of undermining democracy.

The new Polish government, which is more politically aligned with the European Union, recently jailed former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his ex-deputy, Maciej Wasik, after they were convicted of abuse of power for trying to frame political opponents on corruption charges.

Claiming they are political prisoners, the countrys former Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek has invited Musk to visit them in jail.

There was no immediate word on whether Musk would do so.

Read more from the original source:

Elon Musk, CEO of X, to visit Poland amidst online antisemitism uproar - NBC News

Ever since his support of an antisemitic Twitter post led advertisers to leave the platform, Elon Musk has attempted to rehabilitate his reputation, most recently by touring the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The Onion examines everything Elon Musk did during his visit to Auschwitz.

Luckily the vehicles engine caught fire before any of the buildings were damaged.

A student of history knows there is much to be learned from the past.

The docents were horrified, to say the least.

Musk stated that it would have made the trip across Germany a lot more comfortable for all the Auschwitz prisoners.

Five times he brought up how much he loved video games like Halo and Among Us, and five times the tour guide was forced to politely redirect things back to the matter at hand.

In a vaguely Italian accent, he kept making a face and saying, Wario is-a not-a antisemitic.

He said that Auschwitz needed to be willing to colonize other planets if it wanted to survive.

Musk said he wanted to make things feel a bit more epic sauce because people were being total downers.

He repeatedly said it was the only weight-loss method besides Ozempic that really made any impact on his weight.

After allegedly ingesting LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, and ketamine, he figured the notorious site of one of historys greatest horrors was as good a place as any.

According to Musk, he was very impressed with what hed seen.

The bestselling item is a $60 hoodie with the slogan Here Is Video Proof I Am Not Antisemitic.

He forgot headphones, so he had to put the speaker volume on.

Unfortunately, all they had was boring Jewish stuff.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation politely declined the billionaires offer.

It wasnt completely clear what he was going for here.

Musk spent the tour FaceTiming executives at Comcast, Disney, and other Fortune 500 companies so they could see how totally non-antisemitic he was being.

To be fair, this is happening every minute of the day no matter where he goes.

Original post:

Everything Elon Musk Did During His Visit To Auschwitz - The Onion

Elon Musk privately visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau site on Monday before speaking later at a conference on rising antisemitism, after his social media platform X came under fire for some content.

The European Jewish Association (EJA) said Musk made the visit with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, conservative US journalist Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev.

"Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial," an EJA spokesman said.

Musk was due later on Monday to speak in the southern Polish city of Krakow, a short drive from the memorial, at a conference addressing the rise in antisemitism since the Israel-Hamas conflict started in October.

X - formerly Twitter - has seen some major advertisers pause spending or flee since Musk late last year described as "the actual truth" an X post by a user espousing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

A report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters precipitated the advertiser exit, which said it had found ads next to posts that supported Nazism. The platform has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for defamation.

Musk traveled last November to Israel, where he said he was against antisemitism and anything that "promotes hate and conflict" and stated that X would not promote hate speech. He also toured the site of Hamas' assault in the country on Oct. 7.

The Auschwitz Memorial preserves the site of the death camp set up by Nazi Germany on the territory of occupied Poland during World War Two. More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, perished there in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.

In August last year, the Auschwitz Memorial criticized the X platform for failing to remove an antisemitic post on the site.

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Elon Musk visits Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro - The Jerusalem Post

Elon Musk, who has been accused of allowing antisemitic messages on his social media platform, X, visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musks visit to the most notorious site of the horrors of the Holocaust came before a scheduled appearance later Monday at a conference on antisemitism organised by the European Jewish Association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow.

The billionaire has faced accusations from the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights organisation, and others of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since purchasing it in 2022.

He sparked an outcry in November, including from the White House, when he responded on X to a user who accused Jews of hating non-Jewish white people and professing indifference to antisemitism by posting, You have said the actual truth.

He later apologised for the comment, calling it the dumbest post that hes ever done.

Several big brands, including Disney and IBM, stopped advertising on the platform last year after liberal advocacy group Media Matters said that their ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.

X has since sued Media Matters, saying the Washington-based non-profit manufactured the report to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.

Musk was photographed visiting the Birkenau site together with Jewish right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro, who is set to attend the EJA conference.

Birkenau is a village near Oswiecim, in southern Poland, fenced off with barbed wire, where wooden barracks for the prisoners and the ruins of a gas chamber endure as evidence of Nazi crimes, and where a monument to the victims stands. International ceremonies are held there each year.

Elon Musks X tells watchdog it has shed 1,000 safety staff

Musk had been expected to make the visit on Tuesday and take part in a memorial service, together with political figures attending the EJA conference in Krakow, but showed up at the Nazi death camp on Monday instead.

Due to schedule concerns, before Elon Musks arrival to the European Jewish Association conference, he took part in a private visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, the EJA said in an email.

Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial.

Musk was set to discuss antisemitism online with Shapiro at the conference in Krakow, which was held before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen at Auschwitz during World War II.

Most who were killed were Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.

In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.

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Elon Musk visits Auschwitz after uproar over antisemitic messages on X - South China Morning Post

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) Elon Musk said that X, his social media platform, could have saved Jews from the Holocaust after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musk made the comment during a conversation with Jewish right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro during a forum of senior politicians and Jewish leaders from 25 European countries hosted by the European Jewish Association in Krakow. Speakers focused on a dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents across the world since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded with on a bloody war on Hamas in Gaza.

The tech mogul has drawn criticism over several antisemitism controversies in recent months, including his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, vicious spats with the Anti-Defamation League and a documented spike in antisemitic posts on X formerly known as Twitter since he took over the company.

But he was treated as a heroic figure at the EJA conference, in keeping with his reception among right-leaning Jewish audiences generally. To demonstrate how X might have mitigated the mass murder of Jews, EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin played a video that scrolled through an imagined X feed during World War II.

Set to dramatic music, the posts included messages such as, The Nazis told the Jews to get inside the synagogue entire families, infants in their mothers arms, right? Theyve closed the doors and windows with metal bars and then SET IT ON FIRE! OH. MY. GOD. The world must know!

Another post suggested that social media could have improved upon Jewish resistance efforts. Its time to fight back, it said. Join the Jewish Fighting Organization, under my command, and attack Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto!

When the video concluded, Margolin said about the platform, It could have saved millions of lives.

Musk endorsed this alternate historical universe. If there had been social media, it would have been impossible to hide, he said about the Nazis campaign against the Jews. If there had been freedom of speech, as well. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.

Historians have also pointed out that the Nazis were masters of using existing media to press their case against the Jews, suggesting that in this alternate universe, the Nazis might have weaponized social media as well as countries today have been accused of doing in their internal and external conflicts.

As a token of appreciation, Margolin, who is affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, also presented Musk with an art piece made from a Hamas rocket that fell on a kindergarten in Kibbutz Beeri, where about 100 residents a quarter of the population were killed on Oct. 7.

Never again was carved on the rocket, along with a plaque reading, Presented to Mr. Elon Musk in January 2024 in recognition and appreciation of your fight against antisemitism and to mark your visit to Auschwitz.

When asked about critiques that X is permissive when it comes to antisemitic content, Musk argued that the platforms community notes feature, in which users can attach context to others posts, counteracts hate speech.

If somebody tries to push a falsehood, like Holocaust denial or something like that, they can immediately be corrected, he said.

Despite the increase in antisemitic content under his watch, Musk said he was nearly unexposed to antisemitism in his personal life because of his personal Jewish circles.

Two thirds of my friends are Jewish, he said. I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. Im like Jewish by association Im aspirationally Jewish.

Margolin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he did not know enough about social media to weigh in on specific policies at X but said he believes Musks visit to Auschwitz will help him combat antisemitism online.

I believe that he is absolutely against any expression of antisemitism and that the visit today helped him to understand it even better, he said. So I can only anticipate that we will see much less antisemitism on social media.

Link:

Following Auschwitz visit, Elon Musk says X could have saved Jews from the Holocaust - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

U.Today - In a significant development for the cryptocurrency market, Yassine Elmandjra, Director of Digital Assets at ARK Invest, recently disclosed that 's hash rate has reached an unprecedented milestone of 500 exahashes per second, marking an all-time high for the digital currency.

Elmandjra illustrated the magnitude of this achievement by drawing attention to several notable comparisons. Notably, the Bitcoin network is currently processing five billion computations per second for each star in our galaxy. To match the hash rate of the BTC network, the entire global population, with each individual contributing one hash per second, would require approximately 2,000 years. In terms of raw operations per second, Bitcoin surpasses the world's most powerful supercomputer by a factor of 500.

Reacting to this news, Elon Musk, a prominent advocate for cryptocurrencies, expressed his response with a succinct, yet powerful message.

Notably, at a recent conference, Musk entertained the idea of using BTC on Mars, asserting its feasibility despite the logistical challenges posed by the planet's distance from the sun.

As Bitcoin achieves new heights, Musk's reaction underscores the growing significance of digital assets in mainstream finance.

This article was originally published on U.Today

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Elon Musk Surprisingly Reacts to Bitcoin's Epic Surge By U.Today - Investing.com

Elon Musk has said his social media company X, previously known as Twitter, will fund Irish legal challenges to forthcoming hate speech legislation.

The businessman and investor warned of risks associated with laws that aim to curb free speech, and said there was a need to challenge them.

In an online interview with Gript, Mr Musk said Xs default position is that it will challenge any laws it believes would infringe upon someones ability to say what they want to say.

He was speaking in relation to Irelands pending Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, which Minister for Justice Helen McEntee had said would be progressed early this year.

And we will also fund the legal fees of Irish citizens that want to challenge the Bill as well, said Mr Musk whose X platform has its European headquarters in Dublin. So well make sure that if there is an attempt to suppress the voice of the Irish people that we do our absolute best to defend the people of Ireland and their ability to speak their mind.

[It is absurd to claim Roscrea is full. The towns real problem is depopulation]

[EU law on harmful speech could make Irelands hate offences Bill obsolete]

He said there should be concern if the Irish parliament defined hate speech in its own terms.

People should be extremely concerned about that. Youre just at the mercy of the ruling party and whatever bureaucrats they put in place. And they can just define something that really is not hate speech as hate speech just because they dont like it.

In relation to misinformation and disinformation, he said unlike in newspapers, X had a community notes function which allowed its users to add responses and comments on peoples tweets.

The biggest lie in the media is the choice of narrative. Because they can simply ignore anything they dont like and they can overly focus on things that they do want to talk about, he said.

Briefly addressing environmental policy, Mr Musk said changes to farming practices were entirely unnecessary.

There is absolutely no need to do anything to farming. Changing farming will have no effect on the environment, he said.

Its totally fine, stop attacking the farmers they can just keep doing what theyre doing. There is only one thing that really matters with respect to the environment and that is how many billions of tonnes of CO2 do we take out of the ground and put into the atmosphere.

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Elon Musk pledges to fund any Irish legal challenges to hate speech legislation - The Irish Times

The fix is in, apparently.

MrBeast, the most popular creator on YouTube, uploaded his latest YouTube video to Elon Musk's X for the first time. According to MrBeast, he was "curious" about "how much ad revenue" he would make from the upload, so he uploaded the video directly to the platform as a "test."

Now, X users are reporting that MrBeast's post containing the video upload is being forced into their feed multiple times a day as an unlabeled advertisement.

"This has shown up in my feed maybe 7 times now," posted one X user, referring to the MrBeast video. "It is both missing the post time next to the username (indicative of a normal user post) and the Ad indicator on the top right."

The user is referring to the proliferation of apparently unlabeled ads, a fairly recent phenomenon on X that began after Musk acquired the company in October 2022. It is one that Mashable has previously reported on.

X has served some of its users unlabeled advertisements since September of last year. These ads appear in a users' feed without any "ad" or "promoted" label that the platform usually affixes to paid posts. However, users can tell that these are unlabeled ads and not organic posts because they are missing the date the post was published, which are shown on posts but not ads. In addition, as Mashable previously reported and as the quoted X user also discovered, users can still find an option to tell X that they are "not interested in this ad" in the dropdown ellipsis icon menu on unlabeled ads. This option does not appear for organic posts.

Adtech watchdog Check My Ads has already previously filed a complaint against X with the FTC over the company's lack of transparency regarding this labeling issue.

An X employee claimed to Ryan Broderick of the Garbage Day newsletter in a recent report that because there's a labeled pre-roll video ad that plays before MrBeast's video, the company considers that to be the disclosure. This, according to the X employee, explains why there's no "ad" or "promoted" label affixed to the actual Mr Beast post itself.

That doesn't make any sense. The pre-roll video ad is a completely different advertisement. If viewers are being served MrBeast's post in their feed and it isn't organically showing up and the aforementioned attributes point to it being served via X's advertising platform then MrBeast's post containing the video is a completely separate advertisement, and needs to be labeled as such.

In fact, as some other X users have pointed out, older versions of the X app indeed show MrBeast's post with the "promoted" label which means it is being served to users via X's advertising platform.

We should note here that it's possible that some users are being served MrBeast's post organically. Many ads on X are published as regular posts and then later boosted through its ad platform. The instances mentioned in this piece, however, are promoted posts being served through X's ad platform.

So, it appears that X is juicing MrBeast's impressions via unlabeled ads. One can certainly argue whether this lack of transparency is intentional or not, but this does seem to be what's happening.

Musk's vision for X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, depends heavily on video content. X CEO Linda Yaccarino's big announcement at this year's CES, for example, was that the company signed former CNN host Don Lemon, sports radio host Jim Rome, and Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard to exclusive video deals.

Musk has been known to drop into creators, influencers, and other media figures' replies and urge them to upload their content directly to X. In fact, he did this very thing to MrBeast on a few occasions.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, previously voiced opposition to uploading to X. According to MrBeast, his videos cost too much to produce, and YouTube was the only platform that could compensate him fairly for the amount of views his content receives. But MrBeast was apparently convinced to try uploading directly to X at least once as a "test."

If Musk wins over MrBeast entirely with a big payday based on how his video upload performs, then the X owner just secured the most popular content creator on the internet for his multimedia vision for the future of X.

MrBeast has commented on his "test" just a few times since posting the video earlier this week.

The creator appeared shocked that his post had over 100 million views. (As of publication, Mr Beast's post has 128 million views.) However, on X, views aren't counted like they are on video platforms like YouTube. On the contrary, those "views" are actually just impressions on the post itself, not the number of people who played MrBeast's video. In May 2023, Musk had X remove the public video view count from the platform, so it's unclear now how many actual views a video gets on X.

In his latest post, MrBeast has asked his followers to vote on just how much they think X will pay him as part of the ad revenue share program: $10, $10,000, $100,000, or $1 million.

It's almost impossible to tell how much MrBeast will rake in due to how X's creator monetization program works. X users can only participate in the monetization program if they are paying subscribers to X's monthly subscription programs like X Premium or X Premium+. In addition, X only pays creators for ads that appear in the replies to their posts. Furthermore, only impressions from other paying X Premium subscribers count towards monetization.

As Mashable has previously reported, X's payout amounts to each creator seems completely arbitrary. X employees have shared that users can't really calculate how much they'll actually make as pay isn't determined by a set number of views like they are on other platforms. Those who have made the most on X appear to mostly consist of Musk's personal favorite political commentators, Tesla fans, and meme accounts.

And, of course, we've yet to mention that Musk himself promoted MrBeast's video to his 169 million followers.

MrBeast has promised to share just how much he makes from X's monetization program from this test. So, we'll soon find out the answer to that question. Whatever MrBeast makes though, it seems clear that X put its fingers heavily on the scale to make sure circumstances favored a massive view count.

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X appears to be juicing MrBeast's views as Elon Musk tries to woo the YouTuber to the platform - Mashable