Don't blame the messenger.

I'm Chloe Humbert, and don't blame the messenger. I can't save everyone from bogus crap out there. The propaganda, the scams, the bad information, the people who are incentivized to whatever, and then, you know, basically bad operators. But I wanted to address, and by the way... I realize that by the time I get five minutes into this, a lot of the listeners will just shut it off and unsubscribe or whatever. And I get that because that's what's going to happen. But I'm going to try to do a pre-bunking here. Dubious marketing and questionable products and services are everywhere. It's the internet of fakes. There's a whole weaponization of everything. There's a book by that name. And it's dicey because there's, okay, so there's three reasons that you won't even get the true information about how these things work. So the first reason is it's dicey because the people marketing these products and doing these things and pushing these services or pushing propaganda or spreading disinformation on purpose, those people have a lot of money behind them. They're the people with lots of resources. They have a lot of money to go after any critics. They'll just go after critics with lawfare. They're very litigious. They can make your life miserable. Now, how is that? Like, even if they don't have any legal basis? Well, for example, there was a doctor who debunked anti-vax myths and stuff. And... I don't know what they said, but there was something that an anti-vaxxer latched onto and used it to make a lawsuit or threaten a lawsuit or something. Chills speech. It chills. Not because they had any leg to stand on. It doesn't matter if the lawsuit... is bogus and wouldn't stand up in court because it's expensive to defend yourself against these things. So that disincentivizes anybody from speaking up from any position where you're not wealthy. You know, most people do not have the means to defend yourself against these things. And in fact, it's hard because you're going to be threatened with lawsuits. I never have. And I'm very careful about what I publish is all very backed up. And I don't point to specific people unless there is something I can point to and back it up with, you know, a reference. Every reporter who reports on these people is taking that risk. So just informing you of these things is a risk. It's a risk. Like anybody telling you or warning you about somebody trying to take advantage of you or give you bad information, every time someone gives you that information or attempts to give you that information, we're taking a risk. You know, the journalists, especially independent journalists, they're taking huge risks going up against, you know, big money disinformation and product pushing and whatever. So the other thing about it is even if you have the money to go through this court process, let's just say you have enough money, the discovery process alone really dives into your personal life. And that could be the purpose. It's going to disincentivize people because the point of these lawsuits sometimes... Could be just to get the person's private stuff and hope they can embarrass them and say, you know, well, if we go forward with this lawsuit, all of this is going to become public record. And it could reveal their family members and open them up to attacks and all the rest of it. So, like, these are serious disincentives to do anything, to, like, say anything. People do talk about this in private.. Yes. There's lots of things that I suspect or that I observe. There's things that I have even gone so far as to report. And yeah. It's there, but it's very hard to talk about. The other reason that it's hard to tell people about these things and do is because you don't want to give air to bogus stuff. I try to do pre-bunking to some degree and hopefully set it up in the correct way. I lead with the truth. I don't lead with the lie. I don't lead with the propaganda or the disinformation or the misinformation or whatever it is. I try to format it into this truth sandwich. I try to do that, but it's still hard to even address these things, even things that are already debunked by other sources and I could back it up and I could show exactly what is wrong. It's still hard to really promote that and push it out there because at the same time, I don't want to be giving it air and giving it to more people than would have seen it anyway. And that's a problem. That's a real quandary. Like, how much do you want to actually help them do their advertising that way? Because, you know, there's a certain amount of people that, ooh, maybe I should try this and then hurt themselves, you know, and I don't want that on me. Nobody does. So it's really, really hard to address these things without... actually promoting them and becoming a gift to rivals. The people who are pushing this stuff love it when they get criticized, because there's a certain amount of people that the minute you're criticizing them, you're helping them get notoriety. You're helping them build their brand or whatever, because they could just say, well, that person don't trust them. They're lying about this, etc. So you get that, right? But the absolute biggest reason I'd say, that people don't warn you about this stuff and why I haven't really necessarily held back for this reason, but I know that it is something that has crossed my mind and I've seen it with other people who are people who actually make a living producing like podcasts or unless it's a podcast or a newsletter about debunking, if that's your thing, then that's one thing. But the truth is, is that most people who are in a space trying to publish something, a lot of people are doing this for a living. This is the gig economy. Again, going back to I suggest that book, The Weaponization of Everything. It's a gig economy. People are making money in this space, like content creators and even reporters and journalists. and people who are organizing. It's all about growth and keeping that audience and keeping those people, subscribers, paid subscribers, attention, people who are going to like, subscribe, share, whatever. And it's hard to warn those people about it and then still have an audience that you can warn about it because people get mad. People get mad. These ways that people get sucked into product cults and MLMs and all of the marketing and the services and all of this stuff, people get hyped up and they get very defensive about it. All of this stuff. They get really defensive about it. And if you warn them about something and if you tell somebody that their favorite product might be poison – Even if you're telling them, listen, this might be poison, and they get mad. They don't want to hear it because they believed it was the best thing since sliced bread. They think it was the miracle cure. They think it was the absolute best thing they could have had. So when you tell somebody, listen, this is garbage, then yeah, it's tough, and it doesn't land well. And people get mad. They unsubscribe. They send hate mail. They... get snippy, they, you know, basically you don't know what they're going to do. And sometimes when people get hostile, you don't know what they're doing. You don't know what they're going to do. You don't know who they're talking to, who they're going to smear you to. And that's a real thing. I've had people who've gotten so mad that I've like debunked something, you know, like it could be it could be something as simple as this is an anti-vax talking point. And a lot of times anti-vax stuff makes the jump into left spaces. It comes into spaces where people are pro mitigation. They're not right wing. They're not against vaccines. They're not against public health. But they This disinformation makes its way in, and then they say something. And then they post something in a forum, or they email me about this and say, but this, this, and this. And I respond, and I say, this is not true. This is why it's not true. Here's this thing. And then they get mad. They get mad and they say, you're not open-minded or you're just trying to this or that or you're on the side of the big companies or whatever the case may be. Right, so you can just get into that, and then you get attacked. And then you find out, and then this has happened to me. Months later, I found out, oh, well, so-and-so told me they unsubscribed when you posted this blah blah, and they said you were mean, and all of this. It's just... {laugh} human relations are very difficult. And it's hard. It's hard. I am not necessarily the most pleasant person. And honestly, I don't know that pleasant people are going to tell you the truth about this stuff because it's not fun. And I had sent out a... a holiday email to my subscribers, to my newsletters, and I'm just going to read what I wrote there. It's difficult to point things out and then get hit with hostility because it's always a coin toss whether somebody's going to enjoy being informed of something or be really not happy about it. I'll be honest that I really don't consider whether information is going to be welcome or well-received before sending forth. Maybe that's a me problem. My decisions are based on me thinking, this is important for people to know about. And maybe something other people will want to write their representatives about. I don't consider, will this make people like me? And that's what separates me from successful content creators and why I could never be an influencer. I'm also motivated by the fact that more people speak up about something, it lowers the cost for everyone. So thank you for everyone who can speak up. And I'm grateful when people do speak up and join in speaking up against people getting hurt by misinformation and stuff that's going on that's not good. And people are willing to write their representatives about these things. And we're just in a very big situation where... There is little regulation on this. There's a Frontline documentary, PBS, from a few years ago. I think it's Frontline. And it was about supplements. And it's really good. There's no regulations that really... make sure that things are safe, effective, if they are what they say they are. It's a really tough thing. And some people are like, well, it's not that it's all bad and it's not. Well, no, but it's so unregulated that there's lots of claims that are made and not all of them are true. And then when you have somebody who, you know, maybe is a believer in something, they don't like it. So I'm thinking of the Carl Sagan quote from The Demon Haunted World from 1995. Quote, one of the saddest lessons of history is this. If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we have been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. {sigh} And that's the sad truth. That's the sad truth of people who've been scammed. And that's why I try to emphasize that if you've been taken by these scams, that's not a you problem. That's not a you problem. That's the scammer's fault. That's the person who misled you. If you've been taken in by bad information... That's not your fault. I think it's important to become armed against these cognitive attacks and against this marketing and against the disinformation. It's important to do that. But they're taking advantage. It's the person who's lying that's at fault here. So this is one thing that's come up a few times when I've said, well... I don't do product reviews. Almost everybody, and I'll just be honest, is that it's kind of an open secret that a lot of people and outlets that do product reviews are actually doing affiliate. They're getting money to do these reviews. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case that they're being dishonest about them. We don't know. But if they have the incentive to sell the products and get people to click through... To those products, you know, you do the math about where the incentive lies. So, okay, so this is another thing when you're talking about products and services, that includes content. Content is a product. Apps, like apps that go on your phone, that's a product. And if you're not paying for something, you're maybe the product. So that's like a real thing. That's a business model. Apps that collect information and then take your information and sell it. That is a thing. People who put out those campaigns just to collect information. I mean, I guess it's a form of like a honey trap or whatever, is that you're going to get a certain amount of people who are in a niche interest and do that. And then you're going to have, you know, basically a contact list. And there are dubious people who sell that. And I've seen some letter campaigns started by people who are, eh, you know, maybe they're not savvy. Uh. Sometimes, you know, I've seen stuff. It's like this person really isn't doing their own thing. information security and I just like ooh and now they're collecting all these other people's information, eh. and I've seen some of that stuff really promote it by like you know big shot influencers and stuff so it's don't assume that just because somebody's like it's a celebrity or somebody you know in quote unquote important that promotes something like that that there's not something you know anybody could be taken and anybody can It is just there's nobody who goes on social media and is completely immune to passing on misinformation. Everyone's done it. I've had to delete posts at times that or make corrections because something was off and I didn't see it right away. I try to look at that, but nobody's immune. So it doesn't matter if it's a celebrity, whoever, you know, big shot. It could be anybody. That's why I basically have decided on the model of just putting out in my newsletter a sample letter that I've written to my representative and I let people go ahead and take it because of – well, actually, there's two things behind that. First of all, it's actually more effective if you send your own letter specifically yourself through your representative's contact page rather than sending a form letter through – you know an automated like process, that is the real thing is that there's products and it could be content it could be an app it could be a health product it could be a supposedly a health product so there's a lot of stuff that are marketed as health products but they're they're not and I've done a lot of writing about that and a lot of references and people want to believe. That's the reality of it is that people want to believe. And a lot of times it's hard to, even with a debunking, it's hard to get this across. And then also keep your audience because you're not going to have an audience if you, who are you going to warn? So there's a catch 22 here. I'm going to be warning you. And I'm telling you, there are people who are already tuned out of this. They're no longer listening because they're already mad at me and they're done. So that is the end of it. I'm never going to reach those people again. That that's not going to happen. So, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, that's the case. And. And so then we get to influencers and especially anonymous influencer accounts. So they get bought and sold all the time. People have argued with me, like, no, nobody wants to hear that their favorite is problematic, right? And if it's, you know, some cutesy animal character influencer account... And they just love everything they're saying. And that's a known con artist trick is to tell you things that you're going to like to keep you hooked. That's the truth. And that is how influencers and successful content creators keep their audiences overwhelmingly. You know, it's about giving people what they want. That's the reality of keeping an audience is you have to give people what they want. Or they're not going to like it. They're not going to pay for it. And they're not going to stick around if they don't get what they want. And a lot of times, unscrupulous people will give people what they want, even if it's not true, even if it's not real, even if it's not helpful, even if it's harmful. And that's the real truth of it. And I've seen many of these influencer accounts. And nine times out of 10, they could be spot on about something. It could be real information. And they could be really, quote unquote, doing good. And then it's hard to really, you know, ding them when they do bad things. But their whole purpose for being might be to do 99 things that seem good so they could slip in that one bad thing. And get you to believe something that's not true, or turn against somebody like, you know, and I think about the labor influencers. So there's union influencers. And recently, there was a strike in a union. So union staffers Who work for the union. So when there's a union, there's the union who works for the workers who are members of the union. And the workers of the union are the ones who pay the dues and then pay a staff to run the union. So that's how union will work. Well, who employs the people who work for the union? Those are employees. And some of those employees are unionized themselves. So they can have labor disputes and labor management disputes, just like any other workplace. And one would hope that a union employer would be better and be more pro-union and be more willing to come to the table to bargain and whatever, but that’s not necessarily how it works, because that’s a labor employer situation that’s just the nature of the situation. So in this case there was a union staff. So they worked for a labor union and the labor union staff, the staff and their union were doing a strike, but it got almost no coverage. There was no social media blitz. There was no, there was only a couple of labor reporters, like independent, you know, labor reporters who even covered the issue because Almost everybody in the whole ecosystem of labor influencers and operatives and the people who are all that, they all depend on this union, the employer, the union for their social media apparatus in the ecosystem. So they're all dependent on that. They need the machine that does the social media influencing and all those operatives. They're not going to bite the hand that feeds. They're not going to... betray their contractors often that do these social media things. They're PR. They're PR. And they might specialize in unions. And so most of the time, what they're doing could be pro-labor and something you would think is on the whole good. But when it came to this, they didn't touch it. Because... obviously, they don't want to risk getting cut off from that social media boosting system. And that's how this works. And I have written extensively over and over again how this works. There are these PR operations that go out online, and it's all basically fake engagement. It ramps up. Nothing goes viral by accident. It's not an accident. It's somebody with money to pay botnets and sock puppet trolls farms and whatever, and they see something and they boost it. So that is how things work. People are paid to do this. This is a real thing. And people don't realize that this is going on, but it is. And a lot of people using social media don't understand that that's what's happening. And that's very dangerous to not understand when you go out on social media to not know that there are a bunch of people who are actually paid to be there and tell you things and sell you things and whatever. And they do get people. So not everybody promoting something. So this is an important part about it is that not everybody promoting products is actually getting paid to promote products. Because like I said, there turns out to be these product cults where they kind of... drive people in, and then they're not getting paid money, they're getting paid in community. So they've set up these communities, and it could be social media groups, it could be on Facebook or Discord or wherever, or just chat groups, whatever. And these are groups that offer community, and then there are operatives that are getting people hyped up about a product or a service or even content somebody's putting out. And they get people to advertise and do this work for free for them and go out and hype their stuff. And people just think it's an organic situation. I've seen so many times people think that these are organically formed activist groups or groups or support groups. And they think that these are just people who've gotten together. But often they're like, run for a purpose. And if you go against that purpose, you get kicked out. Because if you start questioning anything, boom, you're out. And they get rid of people that don't tow the line of the product or whatever they're promoting in these groups. But there's also legitimate groups that are real groups and that are genuine and are organic and are grassroots organizations, activist groups, support groups, social groups, whatever. And they get infiltrated by these people.. And then you've got people who are, you know, trying to get the admin, like whoever's the person in charge of a group, because there's usually online, you have to have somebody that's moderating stuff or else it just fills with spam totally. spam and disinformation, like anything that's unmoderated is just going to fill with garbage. That's just the way it is. And so there's often people who are in charge of these organizations. So you've got, you know, maybe a nonprofit organization. It could be as formal as that. It could be a nonprofit organization and the director is, you know, or the founder or whatever. Or it could just be like a social media group where the admin is in charge. But either way, these operatives who are doing PR or marketing or vendors themselves or independent actors who are selling stuff or pushing something, they contact the person in charge. So it could be the person who's running the org or it could be they find out about the support group and they get the moderator or... Or whatever. And then they ask them, oh, well, you can partner with us. And if you let us advertise or, you know, let us inform your friends or your community about this special product that is, you know, it's bogus or it's just nonsense or it's not even so much that it's like a bad product. It's just that it's advertising. And so then there's this incentive where the person in charge, do they tell their membership? Do they tell the other people they're getting paid? They're supposed to, I think. I think bloggers in the United States have to inform. So if you run a blog or you publish anything, a newsletter, you're an influencer, whatever, you have to disclose if you're promoting something that you're... Now, I'm not saying that all people do. They don't because they catch celebrities not disclosing. But that's who gets caught because they can charge them a bunch of fines. Just a bit player. They're not going to waste their time going after. the regulators, I mean, aren't going to waste their time going after small stuff. So a lot of these people don't, you don't know. You don't know if the person running the group you're in is taking money to promote this product. They may, they may not. They might just be, have been convinced that it's the right thing to do because, ooh, this special secret product is going to help your community get an edge, you know? And it's like, that's how they really get people in. Like, it's a very culty thing. Like, we're going to You're going to be enlightened. You're going to have an edge over all these other poor slobs who don't know about this great product that makes it possible for you to do X, Y, and Z and all of this stuff. They really, they really capitalize on that. You're special thing. That is a very specific thing that I've seen with influencers, too, is that you're special. You're smarter than the rest. You deserve this special insider information. Oh, gosh, the insider information thing. Nobody is giving you inside information, like truly inside information behind the paywall. Because just because you can pay doesn't mean people trust you. Obviously, there's people with money who just subscribe just to try to get this inside information. So we all know that. But yeah, it's definitely something that people lure people in with. Here’s this special thing that you're special and you're going to know about this. It's so, so tiring and harms people in a few different ways. Like if it's a health product and it's not real and it's not going to do anything, that could be harmful. It could also have side effects. And I've, you know, written about like how, you know, unproven safety profiles on stuff. That's not good. In another way, people are harmed financially. So people get harmed financially. And that is a real harm. But also, there's other situations where what some people suspect might be like a pump and dump, where they promote a product because they're trying to pump up the stock and... manipulating stocks this way can actually harm the product. Pumping it up to get a stock to go up, and you're saying things that aren't true, eventually people are going to figure out that they're not true. And then it could tank. And one of these situations... is very important to public health because people were trying to make Novavax into a meme stock. Not good. Not good. Because now it's like one of the most shorted stocks. So people are expecting it to tank. Like they're betting against it. That's not good. There's three COVID vaccines that are in the ballpark. We want more vaccines, not less. Right? So If people tank this company for no good reason just because they're playing games in the stock market, that's not good. That's not good. So I would love to be able to warn everybody about every single nonsense thing that comes down, but it's not possible. And I would like to save every single person from obviously harm, but also wasting their money on stuff or wasting their time. Or they're giving free labor, helping somebody promote nonsense for free, or mistaking a product cult for real community. And often this involves people becoming so invested in the fake community, the product cult, that they actually turn their back on real possible connections with real people. That's another terrible, terrible harm that comes from this product promotion stuff. Because when you make your community around a product, if you're making your community about the product, and then the product turns out to be not good in some way. People entrench in and they don't want to lose that community. So it's not, and it's not, it could be not even real. And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know what the answer is. But it's, I think, part of a bigger, bigger problem in the information landscape and the erosion of community in our society as a whole. I do think that this is – yeah, I think it's that serious, sadly. I think – misinformation and stuff pushed for profit and money making is that serious that serious so if you've made it this far and you didn't like rage quit um thanks for being here uh thanks for waiting it out to the end uh I wish I had more capacity to be better at the game, to import this information more effectively to more people. But I'm not sure that there is a way. I just want people to be okay. I just want people to not be harmed and to know the truth and have access to critical analysis of things and not just be taken along for a ride. And I hope that's not hopeless. But if you care about dishonest advertising or unregulated products... and stuff. This is something that you need to write your representatives about, because that's where regulation comes from, is laws and regulatory bodies that your elected representatives would be doing. So it just really all comes down to that. Write your reps. Do it now.