Blog: The Predatory Nature of Social Media

Hey there, reader, I’m sure you must have come across the ridiculous trends that come up on social media. Most of these start off as harmless trends, something that’s fun or that’s aesthetically pleasing, like the restock videos or amazing Amazon finds or the cook from scratch trend. Maybe it’s the human psyche, but over time, these trends take a dark turn. With the cook from scratch trends, it’s now a politically and religiously motivated ‘trad wife’ trend that looks down on feminism, equality and aims to uphold traditional gender roles. Or the restock videos are now evolving into a marketing scheme with increasing over-consumption that’s harmful to our already fragile environment. With social media mirroring our real lives, but with fewer restrictions, my interest in understanding the root cause of why humans do something emboldens as the days go on. 

Someone claiming to earn 22,000$ in a couple of days

As I was entering into the world of social media trends (believe me, I’m a novice when it comes to this), I came across these shorts (or reels, whatever), where the person mentioned that they earned 22,000$ in 60 days. And I was curious. I mean, who doesn’t want the chance to earn so much? On first glance, it seemed sketchy. And the more I found out, the sketchier it seemed. 

Let’s understand this with an example. There was a new ‘get quick rich’ scheme circulating around social media, called MRR, which stands for Master Resell Rights. When you sell a product with MRR, the buyer now has the right to sell the product as their own and keep 100% of the profits. Although introduced in the 1990s to help digital product creators, it progressed to be used as a quick cash grab. 

It starts off with you buying a training course from the content creator on any topic (although they’re usually on digital marketing). The course usually contains training videos and course materials. With your purchase, you also receive the MRR for the course materials. So you’re free to add your branding to the course materials and sell them off as your own, keeping 100% of the profits. Amazing, right? No upfront setup or costs other than buying the course, and you have your own product to sell! Now, you must be wondering how much this course costs. Well, I can tell you that with a meager investment of 497$, you can earn as much as the creator below does. 

Amount earned by an influencer during the week

To understand the timeline and prevalence of this trend, I used Google Trends and looked for the keyword ‘master resell rights’. As you can see in the graphs below, assuming the occurrence on social media sites and Google to be correlated, the scheme started picking traction around mid-2023, peaked by late 2023 to early 2024 and slowly went down. The downward trend also coincided with other content creators picking up on this scam and making ‘beware’ videos on the platforms.  

Looking at the top regions of interest, it’s not surprising that the top 4 countries are predominantly English-speaking, since most videos are in English. However, the interest score in the countries outside top 5 is less than 1 and its not clear why, based on the preliminary analysis.

Interest over time from Google Trends

Interest by Region from Google Trends

Now, you might have a question: Why are such videos predatory? I call them predatory due to the techniques these content creators use to push such schemes. Using emotional manipulation, misleading claims, lacking transparency or accountability, playing to the buyers political or religious feelings, encouraging people to break their banks or take a loan to front the initial costs, all, while knowing that the newcomers might not make as much money as they did (if that is true in the first place). End of the day, there are only so many people you can sell it to, and the market will be saturated soon enough. 

If you look at the people they usually target, it’s very gendered, with single mothers, stay-at-home moms being their primary target, along with people with medical or financial issues. 

In conclusion, I believe that certain social media trends are not just ‘trends’. They have a very real impact on our world and on the people who associate with them. They receive high engagement, which means the algorithm naturally boosts them. However, most scholars do not focus on these issues. Do these not count as an issue of safety and privacy? How are these different from financial frauds or phishing scams? Can we ignore them due to their high saturation rate without actually trying to quantify their ‘impact’ within the short time they are popular? And finally, do content creators have an ethical responsibility to make sure they do not spread misleading claims with significant financial outcomes? As with other misinformation, how should the platforms take this into consideration? Or is it always the responsibility of the end user?  

- Written by Brahmani Nutakki