MrBeast is celebrating his birthday with a $50,000 (P2.78-M) giveaway for his lucky followers
Renowned YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is famous for giving away millions of dollars to strangers. To celebrate his birthday, he's doing what he does best—handing out a whopping $50,000 (P2.78 million) to five lucky Instagrammers.
On his Instagram account, MrBeast posted a picture of himself surrounded by lots of cold, hard cash. He explained in the caption that five of his Instagram followers will receive $10,000 (P558,000) from the $50,000 he allotted.
In order to win, the famous internet personality instructed that his followers must share the picture to their respective Instagram Story and tag others in the comment section of the post. He also said that joiners must be following his account so he can reach out to them in case they win.
Winners will be announced after 72 hours since MrBeast posted the picture on May 8. The vlogger did not specify which countries are included in the raffle.
As of writing, the post has since received 18 million likes and 21 million comments. Many celebrities in the Philippines even got in on the action and tagged their nearest and dearest in the comments section, such as Rodjun Cruz, Antoinette Jadaone, Winwyn Marquez, Isabelle Daza, Dominic Roque, Esnyr Ranollo, and more.
MrBeast's promo, however, did not sit well with Instagram as his post was taken down by the social media platform on May 10.
Based on Instagram's promotion guidelines, the YouTube star's campaign violates Instagram's rule that posts on the app must not "encourage users to inaccurately tag concent" or "encourage people to tag themselves in photo if they aren't in the photo."
The post's removal was confirmed by MrBeast when he posted an Instagram Story with the same photo he used for his post and a text that says, "Insta took my birthday post down, all good though we were saving names!"
Apart from assuring fans that his team kept track of the users who met his promo's requirements, MrBeast doubled the number of winners to 10 and the giveaway amount to $100,000 (P5.56 million).
The YouTube star gained prominence for his content that revolve around expensive stunts, such as recreating the popular South Korean survival series Squid Game by recruiting hundreds of participants to play the viral show's games—sans the deaths. Recently, he made headlines when he helped 1,000 blind people get cataract surgeries.
All of these made him one of the most subscribed content creators on the platform, having 151 million as of writing.
Editor's note: This story was updated to include the removal of MrBeast's birthday post on Instagram.