 TikTok bans MLMs, Jeff Bezos continues to treat his workers poorly, and the vanilla lawsuits. Hi friends, Madison here, back with some of the latest, and if you like these types of videos, don't forget to subscribe, like this video, and comment for engagement if you want. And well, let's get into the video. First, we have to talk about the TikTok ban on MLMs. Like, this is huge. Last week, when TikTok announced its update to its community guidelines, there was a particularly exciting and surprising update. Under a section of policy prohibiting types of frauds and scams, that's right, frauds and scams, the company became the first major social media platform to completely ban MLMs, as a part of what the company sees as fraud and scams. A spokesperson said that this addition to their policy will help people know what to report on TikTok, which further helps to protect people, especially those who may be vulnerable or completely unaware of MLMs. I guess that just makes TikTok another MLM hater, hundreds of thousands of people in the anti-MLM community, and social media banning MLMs, but no, they're just all haters. MLMs aren't a scam, everybody just doesn't like the fact that people are making money in MLMs. That's all. Just kidding. MLMs, in my opinion, are a complete scam, and this is a great move on TikTok's part. So far from what I've seen online, a lot of MLM reps are just staying silent about this and not really talking about the TikTok ban. I might have just not seen the right things. I don't really snoop that much on social media, but from what I see, a lot of MLM reps are staying silent about this whole situation. I think because it's just a hard situation to explain, how do you explain that TikTok banned your entire business model that you're involved in? How do you explain and justify that? You can't really say that a social media platform is just a hater. You can't really say that an entire company misunderstands what your business does. So it's a really hard thing to justify to your downline or to people that you're trying to recruit into your company. And the truth is, there are some legit Ponzi schemes out there. So when you have programs out there like that, get rich quick schemes, unfortunately, they categorize all of those business opportunities into the same category. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube does have similar policies, but they don't ban legitimate business models. The problem is when a new platform like TikTok gets hot, people abuse the crap out of it, ruin it for everyone else who are promoting legit products and opportunities. From what I've seen, a lot of MLM reps were moving on to TikTok with their content, trying to use a newer platform to get new recruits into their business, and a lot of people were really unhappy with this. There's also just been a general online conversation about the predatory business practices of MLMs and why they're not a good thing in the world. And I think it was a really awesome move for TikTok to be like, no, we don't want this on our platform. We basically don't want to be responsible for people getting scammed by MLMs, because if you think about it, the social media platform that MLMs are recruiting on has some responsibility on all of this. They are giving MLM reps a medium with which to spread their business model and to target and try and recruit people, because the thing is modern MLM companies almost rely solely on social media for recruitment. So banning MLMs on social media would mean that modern MLMs and the recruiting practices that they have would pretty much cease to exist as we know it. Of course, if all social media companies ban multi-level marketing companies, I don't think that means that MLMs will cease to exist. They'll probably try and find a way to work around that or resort back to older ways like recruiting through the phone or door-to-door sales. In my opinion, multi-level marketing will be a business model that will continue to persist unless federal regulators step in. The recruitment tactics and the grooming process that MLMs use to row people in is too powerful, in my opinion, and the business structure of exploiting others for monetary gain is too alluring for those at the top for MLMs to completely cease to exist. But TikTok doing this has undoubtedly stopped another social media platform from being completely overrun by MLM sales pitches, which in turn is protecting a lot of people from being scammed. Now let's just wait on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook, where ya at? Instagram, aka Facebook, where ya at? Let's get on this train of not allowing the MLM scam to persist. This TikTok ban also comes shortly after the news that MLMs are actually on the decline in recent years. According to Seeking Alpha, relative to U.S. retail sales direct selling, i.e. multi-level marketing, in the United States is declining. Meanwhile, MLM companies and their selling agents are telling a completely different story. We all know it, the classic, I make so much money, look at this car, look at these trips. When in reality, the entire MLM industry is actually on the decline. And you can see a graph of MLMs declining. It doesn't look like much, but it is actually quite a bit when it's put into percentages. I can't help but feel like the online conversation surrounding the truth of MLMs, how 99% of people in MLMs lose money according to the FTC, how predatory the recruitment practice is. I feel like the spread of this information has stopped the spread of MLMs. I hope that regulators are kind of just playing catch-up to online conversation and that eventually one day MLMs will be shut down by federal regulators. But regardless, I do think that the anti-MLM community as a whole has done a lot to help prevent the spread of MLMs and to spread valuable information regarding MLMs and their business practices. Whether you have helped share anti-MLM content, follow anti-MLM creators, or an anti-MLM creator yourself, or even posted a one-off post on the anti-MLM subreddit, know that you did and are doing your part in helping spread information about the dangers of MLMs that will hopefully prevent more people from joining MLMs and maybe even get larger social media companies to no longer allow MLM content on their website. So at least there's some good news in 2020. Next, let's talk about a sadder yet completely unsurprising topic and that's how Jeff Bezos has treated Amazon workers in 2020. A former secretary of labor, Robert Riesh, received an email from a worker at Amazon's Whole Foods Delivery Warehouse in industry city Brooklyn, New York. She said that six of her coworkers have tested positive for COVID since October because safe social distancing isn't only being ignored, but completely discouraged. The worker claimed that when employees express their discomfort with the lack of social distancing to upper management, they are yelled at about filing orders faster or told that they can take a leave of absence with no pay. The thing is, as we know, Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, with Amazon being one of the richest companies in the world. But even worse, Jeff Bezos has profited so much off of the pandemic in the last nine months that he could give every Amazon employee every every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. Just think about that. If he were to give his own employees $100,000, he would still be just as rich as he was before the pandemic and still the richest person in the world. So there's a depressing fact of the day. So because of that, you'd think that he'd at least be concerned of the safety of his workers. You'd think he'd at least try and make a safer workplace, especially since his workers are the reason he's as rich as he is. If there were zero workers that would do any work for Amazon, it would cease to exist. Period. If no one worked for Amazon, if no one packaged goods, send them out, deliver them, et cetera, there would be no Amazon. And there would be no Jeff Bezos as we know today. So you'd think he'd at least want a safe workplace for these workers who have given him everything he has. Yet since October, employees who are risking their lives for Amazon and for the people who are purchasing off of Amazon, these employees have been hit hard with COVID with more than 20,000 US based Amazon workers getting infected. And this estimate itself has come from Amazon and hasn't been independently verified. And Amazon has not revealed whether or not any employees have died. So it's really, really concerning stuff. On top of that, because of the holidays and holiday deliveries and gift purchasing, Amazon added 400,000 new jobs, most of them unsafe and underpaid. While a lot of local businesses and stores are closed, many feel forced into purchasing holiday gifts for their loved ones off of Amazon. It's a horrible situation where so many rely on Amazon for buying their goods or now feel that they have no other option but to purchase and send out holiday gifts through Amazon, yet so many Amazon employees aren't being paid well or treated well enough. In my personal opinion, I feel like a lot of companies that put convenience first and foremost in terms of their company values are the ones that end up treating employees the worst, yet are able to thrive regardless because people start to rely on their service and people begin to expect the level of convenience that this company provides, yet this company is providing that convenience off of the backs of workers who are hurting and being treated horribly in the name of convenience. This emphasis on convenience for the customer results in so much pressure for the employees. Employees of Amazon not being allowed to use the restroom in some cases as it's been reported, or Amazon delivery workers having extremely strict guidelines for when and how they drop off packages so they can drop off as many packages as possible and completely exhaust themselves. The funniest thing is, in contrast to Jeff Bezos, Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife and also a founder of Amazon, let's not forget that, who received shares of Amazon vowed to donate most of her wealth to charity. And in these last four months, Mackenzie Scott has donated four billion dollars to charity. Four billion to charity. The contrast between these two people is shocking. Mackenzie really said, I gotta make up for all the damage that Bezos is causing. And for our last topic of the day, let's talk about something that I really have no idea how to feel about. And that is the vanilla lawsuits. According to Inside Edition, Long Island lawyer Spencer Sheehan has filed nearly 100 lawsuits over products labeled as vanilla. Sheehan alleges these products falsely advertised their products as vanilla. He told Inside Edition, just because it says vanilla doesn't mean it's vanilla. That only describes the way the product tastes. It's not real vanilla, which is concerning, if true, just a little concerning. I think because a lot of people label vanilla as like kind of a boring and basic flavor, we don't think that it's gonna have anything in it. We think it's just vanilla. It's the basic, boring flavor that most people enjoy and that's all there is to it. But in reality, it might not be that simple. Sheehan has filed these lawsuits in four different states. On behalf of consumers who he claims have been deceived when buying products like milk, yogurt, cake mix, the list goes on. Even though the FDA regulates how companies can label their products, Sheehan argues that these companies are bending the FDA rules. Sheehan has requested $500 million in overall damages, but states that money isn't the purpose of the case and that the main goal is that the products are more accurately labeled. In a lawsuit filed last Friday against Wegman's food markets, Sheehan alleges that its generic vanilla cake mix product is deceptive. It's misleading to describe a vanilla flavored food as naturally flavored, where it contains vanilla in from non vanilla sources, because consumers will understand this to mean it is flavored with natural vanilla from the vanilla bean. The suit goes on claiming that the product deems it contains no artificial flavors, despite the main ingredient including ethyl, vanilla and piperinol. I completely probably said that wrong. The lawsuit said adding that they are all artificial flavors. In another suit filed last Sunday against Nestle, Sheehan alleges that the company's vanilla flavored almond milk creamer, which labels itself naturally flavored, is implied that it is naturally flavored with vanilla, even though the flavor is not derived from vanilla beans. There have been at least 10 lawsuits that have settled privately, which to me at least means there's some validity, if not a lot of validity in these cases. If so, I think it's amazing that Sheehan had the courage to kind of come forward with these lawsuits and go after these really large food companies. But also it's if this is true, it makes me really concerned like really concerned about what's in our food products. Whenever there's one case like this that comes forward, it makes me wonder how many other companies are hiding what's in their food products or skirting around FDA regulations. Though I will say when you see where vanilla flavoring comes from, just read that. When you see where vanilla flavoring comes from, I can see why companies might want to make it look like their flavoring comes from vanilla bean instead of that. And I can also see why companies would want to settle privately so that it doesn't leak out publicly that their flavoring comes from that. And that's all for today's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. Shout out to my Patreon members up on the screen. Thank you so much for supporting the channel. If you want to join my Patreon, the link is in the description. We have a lot of fun on our Discord and a lot of exclusive content coming soon. My merch is also right below this video and I will catch you guys in the next one.