In WIRED's The Big Interview, Mark Cuban described how the internet's most-watched creator decides what to film. "I had a conversation with MrBeast that was illuminating to no end," Cuban told WIRED's Lauren Goode. “And he basically said […] he spends millions of dollars reverse engineering the algorithms on each platform. That's where he comes up with the ideas on what to do next.”
Cuban was not, in the moment, talking about YouTube. The exchange came a month after the 2024 election, as Goode asked how anyone could tell what was really happening on social media. Cuban, who had campaigned for Kamala Harris, said the answer was to "flood the zone" with clips and memes, and he offered MrBeast as the proof that distribution can be engineered. "[That's what] I told the Harris campaign and, you know, they really didn't pursue it," he said, before relaying the conversation. "That's exactly what the next political campaign has got to do." He had made the same argument on MSNBC in October 2024, saying the campaign "has got to come up and reverse-engineer these algorithms and come up with a response."
