Elon Musk responds to MrBeast's announcement that he's 'quitting YouTube'

Social Media star MrBeast announced on April 1, aka April Fool's Day, that he was "quitting YouTube". It's a statement that's come as a surprise to a few people.

Not least because MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has more than 240 million subscribers on his YouTube page, with some estimates suggesting he earned in excess of 80 million dollars (nearly £63 million) in 2023.

Among the people responding to his declaration was X owner Elon Musk, who commented: "You should actually".

Another X user probed a bit deeper and asked why, to which MrBeast responded: "Posting to X full time now".

Some have speculated the announcement from MrBeast is an April Fool's Day joke, but so far there's been no clarity on whether it's true or just a joke.

But it's also not the first time MrBeast and Musk have crossed paths. You just have to look at the X exchange from 2022 pinned to the top of MrBeast's profile for a trip down memory lane.

Back then, Elon Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, writing: "If I die under mysterious circumstances, it's been nice knowin' ya."

To which MrBeast cheekily quipped: "It that happens can I have Twitter", and Musk responded saying: "Ok".

MrBeast's X bio also has him listed as 'X Super Official CEO'.

Earlier this year, MrBeast revealed he had earned more than 250,000 US dollars (£196,600) from posting a video to X.

The American had previously said it was not worth posting new content directly to the Elon Musk-owned platform because creators only received a small amount of advertising revenue.

He has also said not even receiving one billion views would make it worth his while to post videos to the platform. But in early January he posted about putting an old video on X as an experiment, because he was “super curious” to see how much ad revenue he could make from it.

The post generated more than 155 million views, he said, as he shared a screenshot showing it had earned him just over 263,000 dollars (£206,800).

He dismissed the earnings for his video as “a bit of a facade”, because of his own high profile, and suggested that other users would be unlikely to see similar returns.

“My first X video made over 250,000 dollars,” he posted to X.

“But it’s a bit of a facade. Advertisers saw the attention it was getting and bought ads on my video (I think) and thus my revenue per view is prob (sic) higher than what you’d experience.”