Elon Musk responded to accusations that something ‘shady’ helped MrBeast earn $263,000 on X, but creators are still puzzled

After creators and influential users on X took to the platform to question the validity and scalability of MrBeast earning $263,000 from his first long-form video posted to the platform, X owner Elon Musk has kept relatively quiet.

One user, conservative commentator Dan Bongino, posted his relatively meager earnings of $379.07 on X from his 5 million–plus followers, saying, “this is shady,” alluding to MrBeast’s (real name Jimmy Donaldson) six-figure payout after a week with one video.

Coming to Musk’s defense, fellow conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair said, “It’s not shady at all. Monetization has nothing to do with follower count,” going on to justify the Bongino-Donaldson payment discrepancy by noting that Bongino mostly links out to content on other sites while Donaldson posted a long-form video to the platform. To this, Musk broke his silence on Donaldson's earnings saying, “exactly.”

That seems unlikely to settle the debate. In fact, while Donaldson’s fat haul was supposed to serve as a validation of the value of X’s platform to influencers, it has instead sparked a storm of questions, skepticism, and even theories of monkey business from fellow creators and social media experts.

“X was playing funny with your video numbers, pushing into people’s feeds as an unlabeled ad, even if they didn’t follow you,” Matt Graves, Twitter’s former director of communications, wrote Monday in response to Donaldson’s post about generating $263,000.

Among the questions: whether Donaldson’s video was an ad or a standard post, why it appeared repeatedly in people’s feeds, why it didn’t have a time stamp, and whether Musk put his finger on the scale to help boost the video.

As with many aspects of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that’s now owned by Elon Musk, the policies and practices that govern the site remain murky, and seemingly subject to constant change. But with even MrBeast describing his $263,000 payout as “a bit of a façade,” Musk’s efforts to recast X as a reliable platform for influencers to earn a livelihood has for now turned into another Muskian spectacle.

An "X Amplified" video?

One possible explanation came Monday evening from X News Daily, an unofficial X communications blog that claimed Donaldson’s video is part of the company's new Amplify program, which allows publishers to monetize their videos with pre-roll ads. “Previously, this program was restricted to corporate partners, but X is in the early stages of rolling this feature out to more creators on the platform,” X News Daily said in a tweet. So-called pre-roll ads, roughly five-second clips that appear before a creator’s video, command hefty advertising fees.

But based on two rules of Amplify—that videos must be native to X and less than 10 minutes in length—MrBeast’s 16:28 minute video that was originally posted to YouTube four months ago would seem to be ineligible for Amplify payouts. (A representative for MrBeast did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment, nor did a representative for X.)

What’s more, some X users reported that Donaldson’s video lacked the pre-roll content when they saw it on X for the first, second, or even third times. Others said that it featured the pre-roll content but did not have an “ad” label.

Whether or not Donaldson’s video was an ad might seem like a technicality, but it’s an important distinction for influencers since it determines whether the post appears just once in users’ feeds, as is the case for ordinary tweets, or multiple times, as for paid posts.

In the week since Donaldson posted the video, many users of X (this reporter included) saw it appear in their feeds multiple times. Also, missing from the post was the time stamp that usually accompanies a tweet.

The end to justify the memes

Musk, who acquired X for $44 billion in November 2022, wants to lure creators and influencers to the social media platform to help make up for a sharp decline in advertising revenue on the platform. Content creators like MrBeast represent a valuable audience for Musk because they bring high-quality videos and audiences to the platform, two things that help drive advertising revenue.

For professional creators like Charlie Light, who runs a creator content agency that runs X accounts for multiple businesses, the various unusual aspects of the video's circulation, format, and performance “100%” suggests that X tipped the scale in Donaldson’s favor. “I think for sure Elon [Musk] wanted him to get a good payout,” says Light. “I’m certain they made that happen, no matter what they had to do.”

To support this claim, the posts that Light makes on behalf of his clients tend to attract between $0.03 and $0.10 per 1,000 views (granted, on mostly written posts). According to the screenshot Donaldson posted, his long-form car video garnered $1.68 per 1,000 views. Other creators feel the same as Light: “I got $102.57 for 30 million impressions,” a creator named Lacy said in response to Donaldson generating his $263,000 for 156 million impressions. It’s worth noting that most creators do not post long-form videos, like the one Donaldson’s posted, and so likely see lower CPM in part because their content is written or short-form.

While Donaldson’s six-figure payout remains a topic of debate among influencers, the publicity may still benefit Musk. “People are going to respond to this and start posting their videos,” says Light. “A lot of people were waiting for this experiment to play out.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com