Breaches of Ethics

 

    "To be or not to be, that is the question." Every person makes decisions and life choices based on their ethics and values. As defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary, ethics are defined as: "a set of moral principles: a theory or system of moral values." Every person has different opinions and beliefs based on certain topics. People are guided by how they are raised, their religion/lack thereof, their political beliefs, etc.. Specifically, in terms of marketing, ethics is defined as the "practice of promoting fairness, honesty, and empathy in all marketing activities. "

    Whenever I think of unethical marketing practices, my mind always swings back to YouTube. Youtube is booming and has been since its start in February of 2005. YouTube is filled with all sorts of influencers ranging from a variety of knowledge and topics. All of these influencers are normal people like us, however, they now have access to a platform where they may choose to use it however they like. 

Brent Rivera, along with many other Youtubers has made the platform to where it is today. He always comes to my mind whenever I think of influencers who may or may not make questionable ethical decisions. Brent Rivera has been on Youtube since 2009 when he was just 11 years old. Since then, Brent Rivera has collected a total of 27.7 million followers on his main channel. On his AMP world channel, he has a total of 5.45 million subscribers. 

    The main ethical problem that is put into question is his choice and use of thumbnails and video ideas. Earlier this year, many subscribers and viewers of Brent's channel noticed similarities between his thumbnails compared to other lesser-known Youtubers and their thumbnails. For example, in the photo below we see a tweet  by Dr. David Liu stating;

 "Wow, I rarely call out creators, but... Brent Rivera is a plagiarist. For the video that I got to work on with @falchook, Brent copied the: 

• idea
• title
• thumbnail
• hotels
• story elements

So, I'm kinda mad." 

    Andrew Falchook runs the channel; Drew Does. He is the creator of the original video which received a total of 6.6 million views. This video is titled; "I spent 100 hours in capsule hotels." He has a total of 348 thousand subscribers. Falchook's video was released on January 31, 2023. Brent's same titled video has a total of 6.3 million views. He posted his video on April 18th, 2023 (4 months after). He also deleted the original thumbnail since the backlash and has since changed it to a different image. He also added this to his bio: "Idea and Thumbnail inspired by: @imdrewdoes! Everyone subscribe to him!"

    This is not the first time that people have noticed him copying other YouTubers. 

    In another video, he was found to have copied the idea, title, and thumbnail of the video. This time, he copied a video idea from a popular YouTuber known as Airrack. This video is titled: "I Survived World's Largest vs Smallest House." Airrack received 15 million views on this video. He posted the video on March 14, 2022. This video was placed on his sister's Lexi account, who is also a famous YouTuber. They received 10 million views for this video. Since the backlash, the thumbnail has since been changed. There was no bio information posted about where the idea and title for the video originated from. 

    In both of these instances, the locations and footage were eerily similar. It genuinely looked as if Brent duplicated the video and filmed it as if it was his idea. 

    A lot of people speculated that he was stealing ideas. I will let you be the judge of this. The main problem that also comes into play is that he is making money off of sponsorships and ads on these allegedly stolen videos, and/or these allegedly stolen thumbnails. 

    His other issue that many fans have found misleading were his pranks. A lot of individuals believe that his pranks are fake and completely planned. This often causes people to mistrust him. 

    Recently, a video came out revealing his "true" self. This video featured a guy named Tyler Oliveira standing outside of Brent's hotel room. He first asked Brent's name. Tyler then proceeded to walk down the hall where he saw 2 ladies in the Shining Twin costumes. He asks if they were hired by Brent. Brent's friend, and also fellow Youtuber Eva stated, that "if we were normal guests." Tyler then gets stopped by a security guard. Eva and Brent were implying that because they aren't normal guests, he can bother them. They were also talking badly about his camera, and how little of a Youtube channel he must have. Tyler told them that they should not believe that they are worth more than a normal person and that they are not elevated based on their subscriber number. He was then escorted out of the building by a police officer. This enraged many fans because people were unaware of Brent's ego surrounding his clout and popularity. Brent paints himself to be this very family-friendly, good, respectable guy. This video did not paint him in the light that his brand does. 

    The other icky element that leave fans thinking that he may not be the most ethical YouTuber is how he showcases girls in his videos. Specifically, in his AMP world channel, viewers believe that he sexualizes the women on his channel. His audience is mainly made up of children. Yet, there are lots of videos where you wouldn't necessarily think that this is their audience. In multiple videos, his sister is often seen doing challenges in revealing positions. There are also other girls in his videos doing similar transitions, dances, or acrobatic challenges where they must be flexible and in certain positions. This is of course all alleged. None of these girls have spoken up about inappropriate behavior, but there are multiple comments and videos produced responding to some of his videos where he may or may not be sexualizing the girls who are part of the AMP World channel.