YouTube makes money creates content and allows creators to monetize their videos in a variety of ways. preview of ads And paid promotions. Creators can get it too Super Chats in live broadcasts, which “allow your viewers to purchase featured live chat messages and sometimes pin them to the top of the live chat stream.” According to YouTube, creators get 70% of the revenue from these donations, while the platform apparently gets around 30%.

Media Matters identified at least 38 monetized videos (pre-registration ads, paid promotions, and/or Super Chats) featuring election misinformation published by Benny Johnson between May 1 and August 31, 2024. They received over 7.6 million views in total.

25 of the 38 videos were live streams that included pre-roll ads, received donations via Super Chat, and generated at least 5 million total views; 10 more ads featuring pre-roll ads were released or uploaded, totaling more than 1.9 million views; The other 3 broadcasts were live broadcasts that collected donations through Super Chat and included paid promotions, receiving at least 720,000 total views.

Some Super Chats we found on Johnson’s live streams included comments claiming that November 5 would be a “betrayal of the Democrats.” To mention a known one QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA” (short for “where we go one, we go all”).