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Hey there, A fun (??) one to start the week. A couple of you actually emailed me about this, meaning our readers definitely have a good sense of what a 404 Media story is and these TikToks have spread pretty far and wide. I tried very hard to figure out what Nicotinamide Riboside is and/or does but didn't make it too far. If you have any idea what's going on here, please let me know. -Jason Here’s one of the more bizarre marketing strategies I’ve seen: A handful of TikTok accounts are posting slideshows that mix AI-generated and real images of North Korea with pro-North Korean captions, as a way of shilling an anti-aging supplement that went viral on the TikTok shop earlier this year. Rather than trying to explain exactly what these are, here are a few examples: As you can see, many of these TikTok slideshows say that mainstream narratives about North Korea are wrong, and that the media or the government or both are brainwashing people into thinking that North Korea is a bad place to live. The slideshows then explain that, upon visiting North Korea, they learned that it’s either not so bad or that it is better than the United States. Toward the end of each slideshow, the accounts show a photo of an NAD+ supplement from a company called Reus Research, which usually—but not always—has nothing to do with any of the rest of the slideshow. The posts themselves are not tagged as ads, but all of them are advertising Reus Research NAD+ supplements. I have found a few different accounts doing this, all of which have AI-generated TikTok avatars.
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“I escaped North Korea in ’95 and now I’ve returned as a tourist under a new name,” one slideshow starts. “Escaping communist Korea seemed like a great idea, but life in the US turned out to be even worse. … [In North Korea] education is free and accessible: the country has many top-notch programmers and doctors. Feminism is thriving here … I started taking these [Reus Research supplements] in the US and already feel much better!” Reus Research’s Nicotinamide Riboside is pitched as an anti-aging supplement, and has become one of many different viral products that have been shilled by creators on the TikTok shop, so it’s not clear if Reus Research itself has anything to do with these North Korean slideshows. Reus Research did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok acknowledged a request for comment and deleted the first account that I sent to them. Several days later, I saw another account posting the same type of content, including one video that had more than 3 million views. This account, called “Mothers in Healing,” had dozens of slideshows with AI-generated cover images about North Korea, and all of them shilled Reus Research’s Nicotinamide Riboside. Two 404 Media readers independently sent me this account, indicating that many people have seen it. “I recently started getting pro-North Korean propaganda on my TikTok FYP, lmao. I had a baby this summer, which I guess the algo knows because the videos all seem to be from this account called Mothers In Healing that is like, ‘for postpartum support,’ but is actually just about how North Korea is amazing for new moms,” one reader said. “Also, when I say ‘videos,’ they're all the slideshow-style TikToks with definitely AI-generated people expounding in captions about how much better North Korea is in the US.” “I was scrolling through TikTok this evening and I was served a carousel on my FYP about how moving to North Korea did wonders for her/her family,” another reader told me. “I went to the account and their bio links to a TikTok shop selling the same supplement. The account is filled with the exact same carousel except the selfies of are of different people.” After I asked TikTok for comment about the Mother in Healing account, it too was deleted but the company did not provide a statement about which rules it had broken. While many of the TikToks I’ve seen shilling Reus Research supplements are posting pro-North Korean TikToks, some of them include anti North Korean information. For example, one of them reads “Welcome to North Korea, where life is more about survival than living…constant surveillance is the norm. Your every move is watched, and privacy is non-existent. It feels like you can’t even find solitude in the bathroom … to cope with all the stress from this totalitarian nightmare, we brought supplements [Reus Research NAD+] from the US to support our nervous system.” The ads also use an interesting blend of AI-generated cover images and real images within the slideshow itself. And not all of the ads are about North Korea. Some of them use AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and Jennifer Aniston to shill the supplements, while other slideshows are spreading disinformation about Mpox, are about TikTok trends like “demure,” or claim the supplements are “better than Ozempic.” In every case, TikTok commenters seem baffled. “These ad slideshows are gonna be the death of me,” one commenter wrote. “This is the funniest one so far,” another said. “These ads are getting so wild,” a third wrote. “THIS IS INSANE,” another said.
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