Can race, guilt, and empathy get you to pay $40 for this $9 belt buckle on TikTok?
No paywall: https://archive.is/nxp3m (or use noscript)
They’re doing a/b tests on the headline.
Sometimes the article is “AI avatars in digital blackface want to sell you this belt buckle”, sometimes is “AI grifters are creating fake Black people to sell Shein junk”
Those aren’t disclosed as ads. It’s scammers pretending to be some vulnerable person crying something like “nobody wants to buy my handmade shit 😭😭 I gonna need to sell my organs to pay the mortgage or my family will be on the streets”
Then you pay $50 for a “handmade” factory-made disposable shit dropshipped from china for $1
Someone asking you to buy something is an obvious ad.
They don’t have to be disclosed as an ad for someone to recognize them as an ad.
And yet, many people don’t. That’s the issue.