MrBeast Critic Shut Down Over Houses Claim

A prominent conservative leaning X account has received a community note after claiming one of 100 homes built by YouTuber MrBeast in developing countries has already been put up for sale.

The claim has been categorically rejected by the housing minister of El Salvador, one of the countries where the homes were built. She said posts claiming to show one of the houses for sale is fake and that they can't be sold for 20 years.

In a recent video, 26-year-old MrBeast and his team arranged for 100 homes to be built in disadvantaged communities situated in Jamaica, El Salvador, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. The video, which has received over 74 million views, focused on the joy of a number of families as they were given the keys to their new fully furnished properties.

On X, formerly Twitter, the RAW EGG NATIONALIST account shared with its 223,000 followers a photo of MrBeast, real name James Donaldson, standing in front of a row of completed homes along with a post purportedly showing one was up for sale.

He added: "Mr Beast builds a load of house for Third Worlders. They start selling them straight away."

However the post received a community note from other X users linking to posts from Michelle Sol, El Salvador's housing minister, denying the advertisement was genuine.

Referring to the post purportedly showing one of the properties for sale, Sol said: "It is a false publication, the person is not on the list of beneficiaries, nor in the 16 that he donated @MrBeast, nor in the 84 that we built as a Government. The deeds have a lock that families cannot sell for 20 years."

In a second X post she added: "That publication is a lie. The deeds are given to families with the lock who cannot sell the house for 20 years, the person in the publication is not on the list of beneficiaries."

The community note on RAW EGG NATIONALIST's X post included links to these posts from Sol, adding: "The Minister of Housing of El Salvador has denounced the post as fake and clarified that those houses can't be sold for another 20 years."

According to X, its community notes are introduced by users of the social media platform and "if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post."

Newsweek contacted MrBeast for comment by email on Saturday outside of usual office hours.

MrBeast responded to criticism of his philanthropic work with an X post on June 30, in which he said: "When we help people (curing 1000 blind people, building 100 houses, 100 wells, etc) people get mad and say I shouldn't be doing this and governments should. Yes, ideally a YouTuber isn't the one fixing these issues but I'm not just gonna stand by and do nothing."

As of June 27, MrBeast had 290 million subscribers on YouTube, more than any other account on the platform.

According to Forbes in 2022 MrBeast was earning $54 million per year, primarily from YouTube advertising.

Correction 7/12/2024 6:52 a.m. ET: The spelling of Colombia was corrected.