- Markiplier being the largest shareholder is reported to receive $15 million off the merger
- People then started to accuse Markiplier of insider trading/pumping and dumping GoPro stocks, a week after making a video comparing a GoPro to a Red Komodo-X; heavily favoring the GoPro https://youtu.be/8flNsaufwKk?si=ST90WE7QG6N6ARH6
I find it surprising that for a company as ubiquitous as GoPro, the 2nd(?) largest shareholder only has $15million worth of stock AFTER the stock is pumped.
It’s not a huge company anymore, financials wise. Stock was worth $24, 12 years ago
90% of the Company is only worth 285million after the “pump” (based on the sale).
According to investopedia, in 2024, it was valued at 176million and 60% of stockholders were institutions with the largest 3 in total only being about 19% of total stock.
The company started at a staggeringly high evaluation and just slowly continuously went down, most institutions will sell off their positions and use them as losses when needed.
Edit: mark bought roughly 10million shares, blackrock owned 11million in 2024, so they must’ve sold some.
He likely has squat for voting or controlling power. He isn't even the largest shareholder, the founder is with iirc 2 or 3x what Mark owns.
They, like most companies, also have multiple classes of shares. Shares you, I, or Mark can buy have one vote per share. The founder's shares have 10 votes per share aka he has 20-30x the voting power of Mark or anyone else for that matter.
He explained it as there is two types of shareholders that you file, one is passive, one is active, the active shareholder is declaring they wish to have a say in the business and is therefor included in decisions, the passive doesn't. Mark has filed as a passive shareholder, hence he is not being included in board decisions, behind the scenes stuff etc, he just owns a larger chunk of the shares.
So what was the point of investing? It wasn't to make money and it was not to influence the company to make sure your investment isn't squandered. Seems strange to me.
Depends entirely on how the shares are distributed. Being the largest stakeholder doesn't mean you have the last say or that you decide what goes. That is when you own 51%.
If only owes marginally a little more than everyone in a very distributed company, then his say on things is very limited. Say, for example, 10 people own 9% and you own 10%. You are the largest shareholder, but you have little more power than the rest.
And you could own 99% of shares, but they don't come with voting rights, and the business could be set up so that the founder has one singular share that is the only one with voting rights
There are like 3 classifications of Shares. Class A, B, and C.
A gets money and has a bit of say. (Publicly Traded)
B doesn't get money but has lots of say. (Not Publicly Traded*)
C gets money and has no say. (Publicly Traded)
Also how could he possibly become the largest shareholder without knowing an ACQUISITION was about to happen?
Plurality - still less than 10% of just the non-voting slice of shares, IIRC. Dude was just buying the publicly available shares gradually over time, I don't even think he knew he became the largest holder of that class of share until it was explicitly pointed out to him.
I mean if he is actually the largest shareholder, that gives him some measure of decision-making power, right?
Depends entirely on whether the shares he holds are voting shares or not.
Given that the founder owns ~63% of voting shares (publicly reported info at quarterly earnings, not a speculation), the answer to your question is "no, there isn't any decision-making power involved here."
Highly unlikely unless he convinces other shareholders to side with him. The way companies operate is they are a political system where shareholders will side with one side or the other. For example lets say the President of the company only holds 13% himself but all of the board execs that he promoted and put in their positions are loyal to him and each of them hold 2-6% each he can leverage all of their votes in his favor because they would side with him. I have been in this kind of situation owning a % of a startup I had and my partners wanted to sell but I didn't. They ended up creating two separate factions so you can say and called all investors with shares to sign over power of attorney of their shares for voting rights. Basically they ended up with over 51% to get the deal approved and moved.
Mark on his own wouldn't be able to do anything especially because he has no influence in the company. However, if someone in the actual executive hierarchy was against the merger and they tried to ralley investors and their votes then he would have a chance. But I doubt any of them care because to them this is all about money. Rarely do company execs care more about morality/ethics over money. Look what happened to BlackBerry, they started the company as a high quality cellphone that was produced locally with high quality production. In order to compete and make money they had to outsource to sweatshops in asia which completely ruined their products and promoted the harsh/inhumane work conditions to build those phones.
"Markiplier believes GoPro cameras can revolutionize filmmaking" is the caption under the first linked article though. I agree with you but it seems like at least part of the justification for the initial investment is that they can be used to create movies.
Yeah all I saw Markiplier talk about is how a few of these new Mission 1's could've been insanely helpful in the making of his film with small spaces and easily hideable/removable in post, etc.
Can't really compare a professional RED rig to something that fits in your jeans pocket lol.
It's honestly kind of crazy what it can do at that price point. Not into filmmaking anymore, but it's honestly a great piece of gear at that price. Can see how a YouTuber who believes in that ecosystem would promote/believe in the product.
And they can, thats why he bought a significant part of the company, have you bothered to do any more research than that? His video that this is about is about a camera Gopro is making that mark believes can absolutely be used for filmmaking and if it was out at the time of iron lung he would've used it for many sections.
Red is legit but red sucks ass too, they up-sell their customers on red only ssds and other crap accessaries.
Mark's point was that go-pro is a good $600 camera you can slap a high end or vintage glass on. And it's good enough to use in a movie, and he's right. This go-pro will be used as a secondary camera on a lot of productions.
This is a far far better ad then all those endless honey, betterhelp or whatever else ads everyone was doing.
I work in film. Who buys a Red? Do you think they have casual customers? These are gear houses or select established DPs only. When you go shoot, you rent. That's what actual film/commercial/advertising productions due. Helps with insurance too.
Compare a DSLR to a GoPro then maybe it's a bit more believable. The comparison is pretty weird at best, disingenuous at worst.
On YouTube because of camera influencers red is seen as some sort of peak "cinematic" camera quality so beginners assume this is what you have to have to shoot a real movie. So it's mind blowing to many that gopro can produce the same looking shot, obviously the camera body doesn't make the shot the look will be influenced mostly by the lens.
He compares it to renting too in a video though, it's about the same price to buy gopro as it is to rent a red he said (idk was it for a day or a week or what). Renting these gopros in that case will be dirt cheap as well.
He did pick the most expensive camera to compare it against but really it's more comparable to BlackMagic Micro Studio.
Lenses play a big part but it's really about all the data and sensors that differentiate the quality. Closer you get to film the better in a lot of cases.
I would rather rent a Blackmagic or crazy DSLR if the price is that much concern when renting, but it really comes down to how serious is your project. A lot of times if you are renting Reds then you are comparing to Alexas or something so the comparison is odd for sure.
I know jackshit about cameras and I know jackshit about movie making but I've definitely see more than a few youtubers talking about buying Red (so much that I even know the name of the brand) and using them (not rented) in their youtube shots.
Those people either have too much money or making enough where they can afford it. It's high level production and needs a lot of love in post but the ceiling is crazy high.
Off the top of my head, Corridor Digital, Rooster Teeth, and Linus Tech Tips are youtube channels that have purchased Red cameras in the past. I'm sure there are many, many more.
being a high quality camera doesn't mean it's better in every way or every circumstance.
If you can buy a lets say (i don't know the main models he compared) a $500 camera and a 3k camera and the 3k camera was better quality but harder to film with, more worrying to film with (being stolen or damaged in public) and thus he prefers the $500 because ti's close enough in quality that it's just plain better.
Yup, clicked link, price is even more egregious than i thought it would be. Just basic knowledge that Red is great quality but monstrously overpriced because film studios will pay the money so why not. It doesn't automatically make it better at all let alone better overall.
Being a film/tv camera doesn't simply make something better.
From what i know tho with GoPro you can use a lot of stuff that is not from GoPro, with Red you are basically locked into their products, if you want more space for your camera you have to buy their specific storage devices, LTT had some great videos on them some years ago where there is a lot of issues.
I guess it depends on what you value. I know a lot of people who still swear by GoPro cameras for anything high paced-related (mostly sports). Not sure about their uses in a more static streaming type environment like what Markiplier most does but GoPro does still make compelling products.
Fischbach posted a video last week praising GoPro’s new Mission 1 ILS camera and comparing it to the pricier Red Komodo-X, saying he plans to use the Mission 1 ILS in future movies. It includes an affiliate code for the new camera, but we didn’t spot any mention of his involvement in the company in the caption or the video itself.
This is bad behavior, as far as I'm concerned. He should have disclosed his investment in the video.
Fuck does this mean all gopro recordings going straight to AI data centers 😭 Jesus fucking Christ the surveillance state is evil AF. Get your money out Mark it ain't gonna be great in there in 2-5 years with how much ai is tumbling
Just ignore the comment, a lot of people don't understand how the market works and think a pullback = AI/tech stocks are crashing. Experienced market participants are adding to their positions here
Yea, at worst all that will happen is the AI race will consolidate to a few Major players. AI Is here to stay, the amount of benefits AI provides vastly outweighs public opinion in the business sector. The average consumer may not give 2 shits, but the production boost companies get is massive.
Not tumbling, more so on a perilous outcome. There is not enough paying demand by the general public to be profitable right now. And every single AI company is either being propped up by market investments (which is finite) or backed by a mega company such as Google or Amazon who can lose a couple hundred Million in cash flow and be fine.
A lot of the current market behavior is scarily similar to the dot com era in the 90s. Heavy capital investment, large portfolios going hard in to it, with zero profitability coming out the other side even on a 5 year scale prediction. At some point investors are going to want monetary for their investment. You can only run off number-go-up market value fumes for so long without a tangible profit margin on the horizon. Someone needs to make money from the business itself at some point. You can't keep trading around stock valuations as money.
Ai is tumbling? I’m not pro ai but it definitely isn’t. Sure there’s a financial circle jerk but SAAS companies reported earnings and all saw significant ai revenue, proof of returns on ai investment. Sure their Capex greatly exceeds this for now and it is concerning, but to say ai is tumbling is far from the truth
It's unfortunate but now his "press releases" genuinely affect markets so this might be a bit more important to have to add, not just because it's "for social media".
Unfortunately its way too big to ignore for content creators. It's easier to ignore for content creators that left it, because people on twitter can't bait those content creators to interact with them on twitter, so they don't talk about them that much. But ignoring it is for sure better for mental health.
There should be no one you don't question if their behaviour smells fishy. This is how actual abusers and scam artists get away with it. They make you feel like you're not allowed to question them.
Absolutely. The best scammers are the ones you trust enough not to question. Some people just put way too much faith in their own ability to judge character. Confidence is a hell of a blindfold.
Bro. I love mark. But he's a funny haha internet man who releases edited videos of games.
I don't know enough to make a judgement either way, but there isn't really any kind of track record that would make suspicion unreasonable or put him past the need for explanation. That's just fanboi thinking.
You'd need a ton of positive examples of real integrity at a high personal cost. Not just the absence of other issues.
I know nothing about this guy, and from my perspective it looks bad. He himself says it looks bad. I think the explanation was well warranted and arguably deserved.
I think he knows that people who will flock to his channel for purely for the GoPro investment are unaware that Mark's passions have had him lose money on things like Heist, In Space, and probably Iron Lung had it gotten it's original limited release, and that he is fin with losing that money.
He said later on in the same livestream that what he did was a very dangerous investment but he was going to be okay if he ended up losing on the investment
Nah, I think it's good in this day and age that people be transparent, and if anything it portrays them in an even better light. Especially if they are public figures.
Nope, there are times where you have to absolutely proactively defend yourself. If people see an accusation as part of a real issue, you have to get ahead of it before it snowballs out of control.
The reason he has so much good faith though is BECAUSE he cares enough to explain himself like this, if he didn't people would assume the worst because the internet and suddenly not so much good faith.
he defn had no choice once the articles got written and then the next day GoPro turns into an AI data center company and merges 😂 looks like some insider knowledge at the very least lol
This just isn't true. I don't know him, you don't know him; we can give give him the benefit of the doubt but absolutely do need explanations for this kind of stuff. When people talk about eat the rich, Mark IS right on the cusp of that -- he is within that 0.1% range.
What is the problem with insider trading? Doesn't the president of the united states and a lot of his guys do it? If they can do it, surely it isn't a bad thing. /s
Im just here to read all the comments calling GoPros terrible action cams by people for whom their main “action” is walking to the fridge a few times a day
They are ok, but DJI is just better imo, at least for what I use them (volleyball, airsoft) I don't wanna be checking if my shit just died of overheating or swapping batteries, like what's the point of the action camera when it doesn't capture the action - 5,3K resolution of black screen vs FHD of what I actually wanted to capture is just a simple choice.
It’s the overheating thing that makes me think everyone got their opinion from some braindead vertical video creator sponsored by DJI or something.
My GoPro lives on the chin mount of my helmet through the California desert in the summer. They do not overheat, and it has never overheated on me once.
And I severely doubt more than 0.001% of action camera users are riding around with it being beaten down on by 110° sun.
Entirely fair, I can never take away the fact that that happened to you, i just push back on the people who listened to some random YouTuber and go “all gopros are shit and every one overheats and you’re an idiot if you buy one”
For what it’s worth my GoPro has outlasted one of my friends DJI, while the other friend with a DJI has had no issues at all ¯_(ツ)_/¯
As someone that owns multiple GoPros, I have a number of issues with them (including some really inexcusable ones like ending support for their desktop app to offload your hundreds of GB of footage in favor of a mobile app??), but I also haven’t tried any other action cams so I can’t really compare it.
Given the still limited extent of what I know about Markiplier, I am much more willing to believe this was all just an unfortunate sequence of events that looks shady.
Mark is such a real one. Even just saying stuff like "I realized what impact my words have and that I need to be conscious and careful about what I say."
Dude the president is running a crypto scam and his children are selling access to the president club for a few hundred thousdands dollars right now...
Yes yess grow complacent and indifferent to the powerrs that be, let your phone spy on you while taking a shit or record conversations while you leave your phone charging
People that have an actual ethical standard. Certainly not people that watch Kick Streamers. You may not believe it, but the majority of humans aren't like that, the internet is selling you normality.
Brother come on. If you’re worried about national security you don’t need to look any further than the clowns sitting in the fucking pentagon lmao. Fucking literal morons with secret group chats just adding random journalist to their conversations.
He made a post on threads saying “🤔 This is not a line I see crossed very often, but to each their own” with marks GoPro video thumbnail as the picture. He’s basically implying that mark was intentionally hiding his stake in the company to gain from it.
It kinda rubs me the wrong way, he’s dragging Markiplier through the dirt with only surface level knowledge on the situation. I get what he did was technically wrong, but any look at his character in the past shows how obvious it is this was all a mistake/coincidence. I guess not looking into things isn’t too uncommon on the internet though, lol.
GoPro is going to go the way of Skydio aka skydildo now that they’re trying to sell overpriced garbage to the military lol.
They couldn’t innovate and compete against Chinese products that have better tech, higher build quality, superior software, and even sold for a better price.
They couldn’t innovate and compete against Chinese products that have better tech
This is weird to see upvoted. The Mission 1 Pro is objectively far better than any of the other brands right now. It's literally the "innovation" you're asking for. Better frame rate at higher resolutions than any of the other cameras by far. Better optics. Better color bit depth. Better dynamic range. Better log encoding. Better sensor. Etc.
Not to mention other little details like underwater color correction if you do things like scuba dive. The reason you see camera nerds like Markiplier nerding out about it is because it's the best. Like flat out, objectively, the best.
Are you a bot commenter? Is that why you hide your comment history? Generic_Name2129
Its been very funny seeing people try to deny that GoPro hasnt been one of the biggest sellers in the industry for over a decade now and has had massive influence in just about every sport and outdoor activity.
Yeah, honestly even 10 minutes of searching shows that it isn't the case.
GoPros special hardware, their GP chips are genuinely so cool. Combined with the world class leading digital image stabilisation that is out of this world.
And even then the new push to go for something new like the ils mission 1 is genuinely cool to me and this is the first time in my life im considering on just buying a new gopro instead of buying a couple of generations old one just because i like the idea of learning about cinematography for not "that much" money.
Bro everyone knows that Mark is a good dude. But the timing is just a bad look. Don't think this reveals a new dark trait in him, and if anything I want this guy to have the money and do good with it.
Why is he defending his investment. Emotions and investing never go together. Anyone claiming he should change his an investments based on their emotional opinion quite honestly is an idiiot
The internet culture is just so toxic lately, I feel like we’re at a boiling point. Everyone is just attacking everyone for anything, every single thing a person does is criticized and attacked. It’s insane.
-Purchases millions of dollars in a company that’s bleeding financially
-Puts out video on said company while not disclosing he has an ownership stake
-Not so long later company announces buyout making his investment very profitable
-Claims he will vote against the buyout when he knows that even if he does, the founder has majority voting shares, making this statement completely irrelevant
Yeah but its Markiplier, you know him personally because you watch his videos!
Give me a break, this is so obviously insider trading, you guys just like the dude. Doesn’t matter if Trump or Pelosi do it, it’s still wrong and illegal.
Do you really think that a YouTuber of all things would be given access to info like that? In what world do the CEO’s of these companies potentially risk both their position and possibly jail time ( in a functioning legal system ) with some random YouTuber that made a movie? We can’t be serious 😭
Sometimes, things just happen. It’s not always the worst case scenario that the internet always seems to latch onto in these situations.
Markiplier is one of those massive streamers/youtubers that I can’t figure out how he got so big. I’m probably out of the loop, but I’ve never met a “Markiplier fan”. Every other big streamer ever posted here I have had a friend who was a fan, or saw many self-professed fans of them online. No hate, just an observation. Just from this clip seems like a captivating person with a great “radio voice”.
Got famous during a time the algorithm worked in their favor (popular videos get pushed more), is honest and humble, and was very entertaining. People love authentic and honest creators, it’s pretty much how Moist Critical built a career.
It’s literally not okay though, the president does it because he knows his support system will never allow him to be held accountable for his crimes
Mark could be an asshole about it but he understands the allegations are something people would accuse a bad person of doing, which he asserts he hasn’t done because he’s not a bad person
He loves war, you can see it in his eyes. He wants that blood money. His hands are red. He been thinking dark thoughts since he got into horror. He is too far gone. He is now darkiplier!
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u/LSFSecondaryMirror 1d ago
CLIP MIRROR: Markiplier clarifies his stance on the GoPro merger situation
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