"Ignoring the ethics of Mr Beast" — in a discussion on the ethics of Mr Beast.
Sure I get it, probably there are lessons in there ethically good actors could look at and use — but if you find yourself casting away the ethical doubts too easily, you might be in a dangerous spot to begin acting unethical yourself. It is totally possible to learn about the whole system with a morbid fascination while being constantly aware of the ethical implications without casting them aside.
The real question for such an ethics-free look at a business is whether the unethical bits of a business can be really disentangled from the interesting bits in a meaningful way. That is very often not the case.
I don't expect to get a reply given how popular this article and discussion was and given how late I am but ...
What are the ethical considerations here?
The opening reply that kickstarted this particular thread was:
> You could say that about literally any shady business
But that user never bothered to qualify what exactly they consider to be "shady" about Mr. Beast's business.
Other than the fact that he has a hugely successful YouTube channel, I know next to nothing about him. I don't watch his content. From what I gather it is mass appeal entertainment.
I've read in some of the replies that he does philanthropic content and there are some un-cited claims that he "pockets" donations (that would be shady if true, but again - those claims were void of any links that would give them credibility).
Others seem to package-deal him in with all of YouTube creators, and they will cite shitty things that other content creators have done for clout as if Mr. Beast himself (or his company) did those things.
Most of the postings here seem to hate him for being successful at creating YouTube content that they personally don't like.
If you want to convince me that a YouTube channel is unethical, then point me towards the victims. Show me who he is hurting and make a clear case for how he is directly responsible for hurting them.
I found the top level comment to highlight useful ideas.
Operationally, so many people would benefit from understanding bottlenecks, critical components, etc
It feels a little silly to say "a more ethical organization doesn't deal with such things"
If we're here to discuss the links, then it's a little frustrating to have a hundred responses by people who haven't read the doc or are unable to set aside their preconceptions about someone saying things that feel fairly off topic to the top level comment
> but if you find yourself casting away the ethical doubts too easily, you might be in a dangerous spot to begin acting unethical yourself
Oh please. If I start a company and link this doc? Sure, then raise some concerns. If I am reading it and finding interesting operational advice about getting things done or inter team communication, I'm not particularly worried about becoming antisocial or accidentally behaving immorally (perhaps amorally is more apt)
I have got the feeling you are creating a disagreement where there is none. As I said: it is okay to look at how evil-corp is doing things, as long as you can disentangle that from their evil bits, keeping in mind the context within which it was written. That isn't stiff over-moralistic behavior, that is common sense. What isn't usually as okay is going all: "Let's ignore the ethics of $X and don't think about the context within it was written". E.g. a simple bureaucratic rule to collect the religious belief of people might be innocent in some free society, but if the same rule was written in a Nazi-occupied country it gets a completely different meaning. Casting aside the context is like robbing a thing of its meaning. Now just because the Nazis abused that rule doesn't mean other societies elsewhere couldn't use the very same rule in a positive way -- they would just be stupid if they ignored the negative abuses of that rule provided they know of them.
Yes, the context matters a lot. One of the frustrations with this conversation (and this is a thing that happens sometimes and doesn't other times - I don't mean to say this is always a problem on hn) is that we aren't able to discuss the thing because we have to spend the right number of tokens acknowledging globally recognized facts.
I want there to be one comment at the top level saying: hey just in case you're not aware, here's context that you need to know when evaluating a document by Foo.
And then I want the rest of us to be able to discuss it with the understanding that we all have that context.
I agree, but I also think that sometimes looking at the data we have holistically is a good idea.
as the most extreme example; we paid too high a blood cost that shall hpefully never be repeated in civilization again with the Holocaust. But some of the findings in those experiments to have value (I know many of the experiments and findings are worthless from a medical sense). I don't blame anyone at all that takes a moral stance to burn such data in order to discourage any backroom experiments from trying to repeat this, but some of that knowledge was used to save lives.
>The real question for such an ethics-free look at a business is whether the unethical bits of a business can be really disentangled from the interesting bits in a meaningful way. That is very often not the case.
I believe it can. a lot of the advice I read here is just good business sense.
>Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.
This sucks to hear as an enthusiast focused on research, but this is honestly just talking about scoping and focusing your goal. very common business sense. But your goal hopefully isn't to shovel out slop with clickbait thumbnails that maximizes engagement.
> This is what dictates what we do for videos... If a viewer feels their expectations are not being matched, they’ll click away - driving down the crucial Average View Duration that informs how much the video is promoted by YouTube’s all-important mystical algorithms.
This is about making an engaging hook. Again, good business sense you'll hear launching any product.
This is definitely for clickbait (and the interpretation here focusing on AVD over quality can be scrutinized), but you can balance this and make a good hook without outright lying.
>An example of the “wow factor” would be our 100 days in the circle video.... we bring it in on a crane 30 seconds into the video. Why? Because who the fuck else on Youtube can do that lol.
crude language, but they understand the competition, and what they can and can't do. Ideally the lesson you get here isn't to just "outspend your competition", but that you need to understand your strengths and highlight them. Mr. Beast mindhacked the algorithms early on and uses those funds to do stuff others don't have the Net Worth to even attempt.
etc. It's possible, as long as you keep a moral compass in mind while understanding the undertones of the advise.
Sure I get it, probably there are lessons in there ethically good actors could look at and use — but if you find yourself casting away the ethical doubts too easily, you might be in a dangerous spot to begin acting unethical yourself. It is totally possible to learn about the whole system with a morbid fascination while being constantly aware of the ethical implications without casting them aside.
The real question for such an ethics-free look at a business is whether the unethical bits of a business can be really disentangled from the interesting bits in a meaningful way. That is very often not the case.