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You've got to apply a pretty skeptical attitude towards this. Literally everyone associated with this has an incentive to inflate those numbers. For Russia/Puti

You've got to apply a pretty skeptical attitude towards this. Literally everyone associated with this has an incentive to inflate those numbers. For Russia/Putin it's a massive propaganda opportunity to sell the narrative. For Carlson it grants him relevance (somewhat temporarily, it kind of also puts him Musk's pocket too though), and for Musk he would hope the momentum helps the platform. And this isn't our first rodeo. The article mentions that Mr Beast posted a video that netted him over $250k, but doesn't even bother to menion the second half Mr Beasts tweet - that he doesn't really think that number is representative because advertisers bought ads on it because it was getting traction. My bet is that it's simpler than that - Twitter paid out an eye catching number for the publicity. In the months since then Mr Beast hasn't continued posting, and no one is reporting making good money on the X platform. I just think it'd be dump at this point to take anything Elon Musk does to market something at face value.

DoItToMe81 3y ago
Or, more likely, people want to see the interview of a world leader by a well known and popular journalist, and it being on a site already used by hundreds of millions of people means word spreads easily.
- aredox 3y ago
  Tucker Carlson is not, under any definition of the word, a journalist. This was stated under oath by Fox News lawyers themselves. Also, the Kremlin has refused all interviews by journalists (contrary to the lie spouted by Tucker Carlson himself) and is putting in prisons actual journalists.
- SilverBirch 3y ago
  If there weren't such a well documented and transparent history of X/Musk/Russia lying, misleading, bullshitting and manipulating then maybe we would believe that. But I wouldn't advise taking Russia's propagandists at face value.
  - filoleg 3y ago
    Arguably, Trump had “a well documented history of lying, misleading, bullshitting, etc.”, and yet he was making a killing during his 2016 election run both for social media and the traditional media (cnn, nyt, etc.) companies. You couldn’t sneeze without seeing something about him somewhere. Why? Because people actually tuned into this and wanted to see it, and the media companies are in the business of making money exactly off of that. Doesn’t matter if it is about lies or misleading statements or whatever. It is noteworthy enough and is of interest to people, so they will watch. I don’t see how listing out all the ways in which both Carlson and Putin suck is somehow supposed to prove that this is all just bots and cannot be organic interest at all.
rifty 3y ago
> in the months since Mr. Beast hasn’t continued posting… In the one month (Jan 15, 2024) since, he has posted two full length videos he had previously released on Youtube onto X, ‘Train vs Giant Pit’ (two weeks ago) and ‘100 Abandoned Dogs’ (5 days ago). For the sake of an accurate and complete context, those were originally released to Youtube 7 months ago and 1 month ago respectively. Also of note that Mr. Beast is an active user and poster on X regardless of video content. Why did you think something completely different?

DoItToMe81 3y ago

Or, more likely, people want to see the interview of a world leader by a well known and popular journalist, and it being on a site already used by hundreds of millions of people means word spreads easily.

aredox 3y ago
Tucker Carlson is not, under any definition of the word, a journalist. This was stated under oath by Fox News lawyers themselves. Also, the Kremlin has refused all interviews by journalists (contrary to the lie spouted by Tucker Carlson himself) and is putting in prisons actual journalists.
SilverBirch 3y ago
If there weren't such a well documented and transparent history of X/Musk/Russia lying, misleading, bullshitting and manipulating then maybe we would believe that. But I wouldn't advise taking Russia's propagandists at face value.
- filoleg 3y ago
  Arguably, Trump had “a well documented history of lying, misleading, bullshitting, etc.”, and yet he was making a killing during his 2016 election run both for social media and the traditional media (cnn, nyt, etc.) companies. You couldn’t sneeze without seeing something about him somewhere. Why? Because people actually tuned into this and wanted to see it, and the media companies are in the business of making money exactly off of that. Doesn’t matter if it is about lies or misleading statements or whatever. It is noteworthy enough and is of interest to people, so they will watch. I don’t see how listing out all the ways in which both Carlson and Putin suck is somehow supposed to prove that this is all just bots and cannot be organic interest at all.

rifty 3y ago

> in the months since Mr. Beast hasn’t continued posting… In the one month (Jan 15, 2024) since, he has posted two full length videos he had previously released on Youtube onto X, ‘Train vs Giant Pit’ (two weeks ago) and ‘100 Abandoned Dogs’ (5 days ago). For the sake of an accurate and complete context, those were originally released to Youtube 7 months ago and 1 month ago respectively. Also of note that Mr. Beast is an active user and poster on X regardless of video content. Why did you think something completely different?