Cracking Down on Fake Follows

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I didn't add myself. Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live, this is it, Tuesday. It's Tuesday. Tuesday, October 15th, to talk a little bit about something that's going on in the business world that I think you all need to know about. And of course I'm going to do an odd to voting towards the end, but it's not the, it's not the. The focus of tonight's video per se. So if you haven't heard and oh, let me just a little bit of housekeeping. Hi, I'm Katie. I'm a business strategist, money mindset coach. I work with clients to help them make more money in less time with your distribution distractions by showing them how to discover their profitable niche, learn how to create an offer that they like, actually can sell, that people actually want. And I train them on how to market and sell their services without wanting to vomit. And I'm going live this evening to the Facebooks, to LinkedIn, to YouTube, to Instagram, and over here on my phone on TikTok. Hello, everyone. Welcome. I do love these to be interactive, so if you have a question, please do pop them in the chat. I will try my hardest to go back. Hi, Emily, welcome. And check on Instagram because I have to have that on a different screen because technology. Anyway, if you haven't heard, there's something kind of exciting happening here in the United States. When I say exciting, I mean entertaining for some like me, terrifying for folks who maybe accidentally made this mistake. So the ftc, the Federal Trade Commission, has come up with a new rule that goes into effect, I believe, on the 21st of October, where basically, if you have ever bought followers, done anything to artificially enhance your follower count or your engagement on your social media, if you pay for, I think, downloads on your podcast, things like that, and you're doing that without disclosing it on your profile and you're using that profile to sell things, the FTC is hoping to come after you. So we don't want that. Right, because, you know, like, whatever, like, you know, people, people make mistakes. People make mistakes. They think that there's going to be a shortcut to being more successful. Hi, Kim. Hi, Cam. Hi, Bobby. Hi, Lorenzo. Hi, jw. Hi, the city Thera. Welcome. Hello, everyone on Tick Tock. People make mistakes. Hi, Michelle, welcome. This is fabulous news, man. I hope some big names get busted. I think we know that they will. And I think we can both guess some names that are gonna get busted. I think you and I are simpatico on that. Yeah. Huh. Hi, Willow. Welcome. But yeah, like the fine. So, and here's the thing. Like, if, if you're just like on social media for funsies and you're not selling anything, it's not a big deal. Like, the FTC doesn't care because you're not making any money from it. Right. But if you're getting paid as an influencer, if you are selling products or your own services through those platforms and you're using your followership as like, look at how many followers I have. Aren't I legit? And that follower account is inflated artificially or unethically, you are going to land yourself into some hot water. And the fines are insane. The fines that the FTC have decided upon for these infractions, like, is up to 51,000 per report or per incident. I don't know the semantics of how this works. I'm not a lawyer. Hi, Yvonne. Welcome. But the point is that it is super important that if you are new, if you're getting started on social media, do not buy followers, do not pay for downloads, do not do any of the things that you feel like is going to be a shortcut to more followers. A. It just doesn't work to grow your business. Like, these are fake followers. They're. They're bot accounts. Right. They're not going to help you. Hi, Travel Dan. And like, so it's not going to help you anyway. And number two, it could get you in some serious trouble and you could have to pay the Federal Trade Commission Commission about $51,000 and change. So not, not a good situation. Michelle, I'm picking up what you're putting down. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious if you DM me. I don't want to like, call anyone out publicly, but. Michelle, I'd be so curious if you DM me who you think is going to get called out. I'll give you a name back anyway. Bob. Welcome. Hi. Teresa. Hi. Hey. And Vlad, welcome. So, okay, so. So, so the FTC is cracking down here and like, thank God they are because there's so many people who, you know, pay for followers, they pay for downloads and then they point to, see, I'm this, this popular and they use that as leverage to convince you that they are an expert at what they do. Right. And if, if that's not true, like, you shouldn't have to be spending money with them and making that mistake before you understand that it was a mistake. Right. The FTC is doing this to really protect all of us. I was talking to my lawyer friend David about this a couple days ago, and I think we're going to ultimately do a longer live on it and really talk about, like, the impact of, of this whole online, you know, economy that's kind of popped up and the impact of all this stuff. Thank God Neil Valio is asleep. He would be name dropping a very long list. Oh, I've had conversations with Neil. I think if you, if you know Neil. Yeah, we're gonna have some very similar names. If you, if you're following and you don't know who Neil is. Neil's my podcast producer. He is militantly ethical when it comes to podcasts. He refuses. Like, he'll, I mean, he'll promote the podcast places, but he's never paying for downloads. And if you're not familiar with the podcasting world, like, here's how it goes down. So there are charts, right? And everyone wants to get on the charts. And it's really hard to get on the charts because the people who get on the charts are the ones that are paying for downloads. And there's basically these download farms in third world countries where a person will be set up at a station with all these phones, just like rows and rows and rows and rows of phones and. And they'll just basically like hit play on one podcast over and over and over. And then it'll go to the next station and the next station, the next station. And so what Neil can actually do is he can go on and he can look at the listen numbers for a podcast to see if it's actually organic listens or if it is a bot farm, if it's a listen farm, right? And the, the key here is like, if, if like listens go up dramatically and say you get like 700 listens in the first hour and then it drops off, you get like five an hour. Those were, those were purchased listens. And it's hard for the average person to go and see this, right? But there are some ethical people out there if you're thinking about starting a podcast. I cannot recommend Neil Valeo enough. He is just a godsend. He does all the work for you and he really knows his stuff. I mean, in two years, my, my podcast, the Weeniecast, has gotten up into top 5% of IAB certified listens, which is incredible. And we grew it organically no paying for anything. I mean, I paid him a lot of money. But you know, it worked out. I'm really happy I did. Anyway, so, yeah, the FTC is going to be cracking down, but I actually have. I know I'm on a political kick right now because I want to just have an excuse to remind everyone to go vote and go vote blue because this is a very, very, very important year where we need to turn out the vote. We need to be talking to our friends, we need to be making sure that everyone we know and feel comfortable talking to about this stuff has a plan to go and vote. And if you are at all able and willing, get involved, start volunteering, start getting connected up with your local Democrat committee and see what you can do. You can phone bank, you can go and door knock, you can drop L for people. There's so much you can do. But I have a little brain teaser for us and the whole FTC conversation, but I think it's really interesting and I'm curious to see how this plays out. So the FTC has just passed this big, big rule saying that if you fake followers, if you exaggerate how many followers you have, how many, you know, people show up to stuff and then you're selling stuff from the same platform, you can get super duper fined, you can get in so much trouble. And it's a really interesting situation because we actually have a candidate who's running for president right now who was president before. I'm not going to name any names. I think you guys can figure out who I'm talking about. Who is obsessed. When Obama had the ideal, like obsessed with his crowd size, right? He's really obsessed with it and he lies about it all the time. He exaggerates how many people are showing up to his rallies. He exaggerates how many people came to his inauguration. We, I wouldn't put it past him to have lot like bought followers for his social media accounts as well because that's totally on brand from what we expect of him and because this person whose name I will not say is also selling bibles and selling shoes and watches and asking for money in the form of donations. I'm just so curious to see if the FTC smacks him as well. Like I, I think it would be a fascinating rule to apply to this kind of scenario because you know, there's, there's already been a lot of fraud within that campaign. I don't know if you've heard of this. They like hid, hid, hid this little box that you had to uncheck, like, literally. It was like hidden in the fine print that you had unchecked. So if you're going to donate like $25, it was checked for you to donate every week. So I think it was something like 3% of all fraud reports for this year, for this calendar year has been geared towards this one campaign. Because people were looking at their credit card bill and be like, I didn't give this much. I gave $25. And this is doing $25. Every single week. There's a report of a cancer patient who donated, I think like $500. And it just continued every week. They just meant to do a one time donation. I think that. Or they were wanting to do once a month. But that's a lot of money to be taking from people and to just like, like do it. Being like they just won't notice. Right. And that's exactly what the campaign is. I don't know. They won't notice. Right. So it'll be really interesting to see if the FTC really, you know, tunes into this and starts applying these rules in the political sphere. Celine. The listening farms are giving sci fi movie vibes. You know, I wish the listening farms were like, at all, like technologically cool because it might make like an interesting movie, but I don't, I think it must be so boring because think about it, they're like standing there playing all these things. They're not listening to it. They probably have the volume all the way down. I don't think they're even listening to the thing that they're being paid to do. And also, like, if your podcast is that bad, you have to pay for people to listen to it. I don't think the people who are even doing the farms are going to want to listen to it. Right. And then, and then, well, I mean, like, and then of course, like, there's a language barrier. If this is in a different country that doesn't speak the language the podcast is in, then that's a whole other element. But yeah, I like, I like that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start imagining it's like, you know, way cooler than it is. Michelle, please go vote. The world needs you to. Yes. Even from here in Oz, we can see how important this one is. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's critical and it's really amazing, the outpouring from around the world. And it's being an American. It's wild to me how many people care about our politics here, but I just, I forget how much American Politics impacts the whole world. Like, I just, I forget about that sometimes. But it's such an important year. What's another lawsuit for him who shall not be named at this point? Hey, I know, just pile them on. You know, I feel like, you know, we should start funding the judicial system a little bit more just to deal with the lawsuits at this point. Right? But anyway, that's, that's my little theory about how that might play out. But you know, just back to the FTC stuff. So just want to reiterate. If you've done this before, if you've bought followers, if you have down paid for downloads, if you've done anything that like, you might need to disclose, I urge you just to disclose it. Just disclose it. It'll make your life so much easier, right? You can have a little FAQ in your, on your website. You can make a post about it. You can let people know that you did this thing. We're all human, right? We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all think, oh, well, I have to be big fast, right? Because we see other people bragging about how they went from like zero to a million followers in no time flat. And it's natural for us to want to take the shortcut. It's natural for us to think, oh, well, I can probably like, game the system if I do this, isn't this, right? So, like, there's no shame in it, right? But we want to, what we want to make sure we do is we protect our integrity. We, we make sure that we're being honest with our following and we're protecting ourselves. Right. You know, I have a colleague who does business strategy and branding and like, this is something that she's probably going to be talking about a lot because how does this impact your brand? If you've done this before, if you've bought followers and then you're about to get called out on it on a very public stage, you know, there's gonna be, there's gonna be a lot of big names. What's his name? Grant Cardone, for instance. He's gotten slapped by the FTC so much lately. He has seriously done some really shady, I'll be honest. And the disclaimers he has to do on his social media are bad. They're bad. You don't want to get to that point. But, you know, if you're just like a little baby offender, you just bought like 100 followers when you first joined Instagram. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think you can come back from that. But seriously, if you're just starting out and you're thinking you need to buy followers or join a podcast or download, pay for downloads on your podcast, don't do it. You. You are setting yourself up for a world of pain for if the FTC gets a report on you by a paying client. Because, you know, one of the things about the FTC that my lawyer told me about is that when they roll out these new rules, also, they also provide some kind of incentive for people to start turning people in. Right? Hey, it's like a referral bonus. Like, give us, give us your con artist and we'll give you something. So we're gonna. It's. It's about to get real interesting up in, up in this club. Anyway, anyway, yeah, it is almost 9pm and I was wanting to go live earlier so I could talk with you guys a little bit longer, but I'm tired. It's Tuesday and I kind of want to read my book. So I'm reading. I'm reading Sarah J. Moss the Throne of Glass series right now. And it's at a really good part. So I'm gonna sign off for tonight. Thank you guys for being here. Remember, go vote. If you, if you're not sure about your voting plan, if you need help figuring it out, if you want to get involved but you're not sure how and you want to like, make sure we're getting out the vote for Harris. DM me, I have so many ideas. I have so many ways to get you connected up with who, who you need to be connected with to get involved. And we can do this. We can do this. All the reports are pointing to this being really successful win for, for Harris. I know the news reports are looking so ghastly and the polling looks really scary. You know, I want you to just remember, even the pollsters don't know how to read this right, because there were so many first time registrants to vote after Kamala announced that she was going to be running for president after Taylor Swift endorsed her. You know, there are communities of people who are voting and getting serious about this for the very first time. And there are a lot of unlikely voters and independent undecided voters who are, you know, have decided that they're going to vote for her. Pollsters don't know how to pull for that. They know how to like, look at data and compare it to what happened last time and the time before that and the time before that and the time before that. This is like a Very abnormal. Like, we've never had the main candidate of the one of the main parties drop out just months before the election, right? So we're in completely uncharted territory. Everyone I'm talking to is saying that she's going to win, but do not get complacent. Do. Do not. Do not get complacent on me. Don't be like, okay, she's going to win. I'm just going to stay home. No, no, no, no. Don't do it. Go vote. Go vote. We need this to be a landslide. We need there to be absolutely zero question that she won. We need there to be no chance of any kind of litigation being entertained on any front. Okay? We can do this. We can absolutely do this. And, you know, I challenge you to go and find, you know, 10 people on your phone that you feel comfortable ish, texting me, like, hey, you got a plan to vote? Like, let's make a plan for you to vote. We can do this. Anyway, I love you all so much. Thank you for being with me. My goal is to go live every single day up until the election. I hope you'll stick with me. If there's any topics that you want me to go live on, be it business or the election or whatever. I'm trying to bridge that gap between, like, the business useful stuff and the election because, I mean, I'm business and this matters to me, but I want this to be valuable to my audience as well. So if there's anything that you're curious about. Oh, and Michelle, I just saw you. You. You messaged me. I'm. I'm really excited to see who you think is gonna get busted. Anyway, anyway, I want to say thank you to Patricia and David and Art and Steven and Ernesto and Chainless and Vito. Vito, I love the names on TikTok. I really do. And Mark and El Young and El Chino and Hannah and Yvonne and Steven and. Oh, my gosh, I can't even. Oliver. Olivia. Oliver. Tight. I don't know. One new message. And Brooke, thank you guys for being here. And then over on LinkedIn, Michelle and Celine, thank you so much. Michelle, I'm very excited to talk to you. And then over on the Instagram, I want to do Hang Ding Hanging one the Real S'. More. And Emily, thank you guys for being here. And until tomorrow, I will see you in my life tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'm going to be talking about yet, but like I said, if there's any topic you want me to go on, you know, just DM me. Anyway, have a good night, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And here's the awkward moment where I have to end in multiple places, so have a good night.