I think he does good work. Does that inherently make him a good person? Who's to say? None of us know him as a person, we only know him as a personality. We know about him only what he chooses to publish about himself, like most other celebrities.

Some people think that the fact that he only does good deeds on camera makes him a bad person. I think this is a short-sighted judgement, because his money comes from content creation. Without it, he wouldn't have the funding to spend on helping people in the first place. Is it exploitative of already-vulnerable people? Yeah, a little bit, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that those people he helped still got assistance from him that they couldn't afford on their own.

I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing the good deeds you do. If it funds future good deeds, and brings awareness that might make other people also contribute, then I think that's overall a net positive.

All that said, his burgers are trash.

Definitely better than Andrew Tate from what I've seen. While he's clearly a very savvy clout chaser, and he's overtaken Pewdie Pie as the most popular YouTuber, he has made a serious effort towards philanthropic acts. The fact that he's using these acts as a marketing tool to further increase his influence is clearly intentional, but he's doing real good with his clout. He's also shown considerable evolution throughout his career, including:

In an April 2022 interview with The Daily Beast, Donaldson announced that he was no longer an evangelical Christian and identified himself as an agnostic. He also stated that he had long disagreed with his church's position on homosexuality. He states that during the time he grew up in "the heart of the Bible Belt", he had religion "beat into [his] head every day", and was taught that "gay people are the reason God's going to come and burn this Earth". Although he considered anti-LGBT rhetoric to be normal growing up, he has disavowed it since then, stating: "I realized, 'Oh, this isn't normal. This is just a weird place I grew up in.' So, that type of thing, I [wish I could] go back in time and be like, 'Hey, stop'."

Donaldson considers himself strictly apolitical, saying that "I don't want to alienate Republicans and Democrats. ... I like having it where everyone can support [my] charity. My goal is to feed hundreds of millions of people ... it would be very silly of me to alienate basically half of America."

...and...

In April 2023, Chris Tyson came out publicly as gender non-conforming and revealed their struggles with gender dysphoria. In response to claims that they would become a "nightmare" and distraction for the channel, Donaldson defended Tyson and said, "Chris isn't my 'nightmare' he's my fucken [sic] friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off."

This isn't to say he's perfect, but he's a helluva lot better than some other personalities your kids could be listening too.

I don't know what kind of person he really is, but I do know that there are tons of scammers that pretend to be him and are ripping off young folks. So your boys should be super careful around him and alleged giveaways.

It would be good to know. But then Austin does it matter? There are plenty of terrible celebrities, as long as they are putting out decent role modelling for the kids, they get to keep their private life

I would say so. He did csgo gambling videos in the past, but that doesn't qualify for me as being bad.

He's very unthreatening at least.

Ah yes, the king of poverty porn.

Wrapping it up in warm fuzzies doesn't make it any less exploitative. Don't be confused - he is in it to make money, the people he helps are nothing but props to him, and people like him do nothing to solve the problems they claim to care so much about, they've just found a sympathetic way to profit from them while deepening the problem (because if we can't even treat fellow poor people as humans, not props, what hope do we have of uniting against those who exploit us?).

He is not a good roll model. Teach your kids real compassion (which includes among other things understanding that people who are less fortunate still deserve privacy and respect), teach them that kindness doesn't need to be broadcast or be produced (because that's what those videos are - productions), it is something we should all be engaging in all of the time, even, or actually especially, when no one is watching, not because we want more likes and followers. Teach them that if they're that impressed with his efforts, just imagine what they could do if they actually went out and volunteered or otherwise contributed themselves. That'd be significantly better not just for them, but for your whole community.

To me he always seemed off and disingenuous.

I get some of the criticisms of his videos, but people who have a major hate on for him kind of amuse me - like he as done more to help more people than most of us ever will and I kind of feel like most of the haters haven't done much for anyone else themselves. Also if my kids are going to end up looking up to someone in this world, there are far far worse youtubers and influencers they could be inspired by.

I've personally been fascinated by the get money->give it away->get more money->Give it away content engine he's produced.

Insane work ethic, for sure!