Oil companies are hiring TikTok influencers to court young people

fry@fry.gsmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 317 points –
washingtonpost.com
71

What the flying fuck?

Yea, it’s definitely weird on more than one level 😂

Pretty sure that thumbnail isn't from the article. I searched the article really hard for it.

The real story is being overlooked: Washington Post is Hiring OnlyFans Influencers to Court Readers

It’s shows up for me on mobile. It says it’s a screenshot from TikTok. Maybe it doesn’t show up on desktop for some reason?

Kbin is having thumbnail caching issues lately, and will assign thumbnails from other posts that were submitted around the same time. I feel like it's been happening for a week or two now.

@ernest, plz

Yea, there's clearly something misconfigured over on kbin at the moment. Might be worth pinging one of the people that runs it.

This is the most disingenuous, tone-deaf corporate bullshit I've ever read.

"we want people to associate us with renewable energy" promotes fossil fuel loyalty reward schemes

Social media influencers are money-grubbing low-lives who will promote anything for some cash? Well colour me surprised.

I'm not sure if they would be classified as influencers but have you ever fallen into the rabbit hole of youtube reaction channels? I fell into it because of a band I like was being heavily reacted to on youtube but I quickly noticed there is a cycle of right wing propagandists like Tom McDonald and other music type people who get featured on these reaction channels. The majority of the reactors I watch are black but they sell their souls for the traffic they get from what I assume are mostly bots that watch and comment in support of the right wing propaganda.

The first time I watched one of those reaction videos I was awestruck by how the reactor was so agreeable to the theme of "I won't apologize for being white". I know it's only tangibly related to the topic here but I have been bothered by it and wanted to share and see what other people think.

I am convinced the reactors or paid to favorably review this stuff.

Eh there are some with a backbone and integrity but many are just there for the money, and many others are just assholes by default.

"companies are using social media to manipulate people and control narratives to their benefit even if it's a lie" there fixed it

Companys pay people to change the Wikipedia articles about them as well...

This is the best summary I could come up with:


DeSmog also found that Conoco, a fuel brand that split from ConocoPhillips a decade ago, paid a nail artist and content creator named Lizzy to post sponsored videos last year.

Francesca Willow, who runs a blog about sustainability and racial justice called “Ethical Unicorn,” said she received a request in May to publish a guest post by Pheasant Energy, an oil and gas company based in Fort Worth.

The Environmental Protection Agency today announced its enforcement priorities for 2024 through 2027, including for the first time initiatives to address climate change and “forever chemicals” known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.

In addition to addressing climate change and PFAS, the new initiatives include protecting Americans from toxic coal ash and curbing hazardous air pollution in overburdened communities.

The Climate 202 discussed the new priorities yesterday with David Uhlmann, whom the Senate confirmed last month to lead the EPA’s enforcement office, which is tasked with holding companies accountable when they violate the nation’s environmental laws.

Hurricanes have become deadlier and have disproportionately affected the most socially vulnerable communities, according to a study released yesterday in the journal Science Advances, The Washington Post’s Kasha Patel reports.


I'm a bot and I'm open source!

How the fuck did that pic make it in that article lol

Seems to be an occasional kbin bug. Somehow it always seems to go all in on nsfw whenever it occurs. No idea what's going on behind that.

Not sure if mentions notify users here, but it's something for @ernest to look into.

I’m having the same issue with a different post… OP said it was sleeping ducks, comments seem to suggest it is sleeping ducks, but I see a movie poster.

No it totally happens in other things we just don't notice. I saw a meme replaced by a soccer player today.

I don't know about you, but I only notice when it's a wildly different pic, usually nsfw. Probably just bias, I bet it happens all the time with pics that seem somewhat related or it's a topic (and picture) you don't care about.

Somehow it always seems to go all in on nsfw whenever it occurs.

Except for actual nsfw posts on all.

Replying to you, but this is actually for @sab

Just checking if you get a notification for this tag, Sab.

Meanwhile, young people would like to invite oil companies to court.

It's working. Consider me courted. Do I just start pouring oil on animals now or...?

Don't forget to light them on fire afterwards, it's what the oil exec would have wanted 🥰

The joke he's making would only make sense to kbin users who have an improperly cached thumbnail.

improperly cached

Or properly cached. 😏

Should there be a giant vagina for the thumbnail?

I think there's some issue with people on kbin seeing wrong images. Probably a question for the server admins over there. It's normal on three of the Lemmy instances I checked on.

Now thumbnails like this are why I joined kbin. Everybody else is missing out.

The image that appears for this story is a woman's vagina, which is... certainly... influential.

Yea, there's definitely some weird bug for some of the users. I just see the normal image from the article. I tried on lemm.ee and also just see the normal image.

Kbin only problem. Usually we get something dumb from improperly cached images, but sometimes we get naked ladies and that gets a lot of attention from our instance.

You're a mod for this community, right? I'm not sure if this would work, but if you were to add an NSFW tag to this post, I think that should federate over to Kbin, which will at least blur out the thumbnail for us.

Though that may also end up hiding the post from users who have NSFW disabled on their accounts, so it might not be worth doing.

EDIT: I realized that the way I phrased this may have seemed unnecessarily confrontational with the "You're a mod, right?" part. Sorry if it came across that way! I didn't mean for it to sound like "You're a mod, right? Do something!" lol

I don't think our instance bugs should impact them. Other than a flood of kbin user comments. We'd need to get a fix timeline from Ernest.

brooke scheurn...promoting ExxonMobil’s fuel rewards program

pregnant mother

pick one

"an advertisement for the oil giant Shell’s fuel rewards program."

THE FUCKING HORROR. LET'S BURN THEM ALIVE!

Oil companies (via “independent film makers”) have been paying influencers to shit on Tesla, ever since Tesla became a viable threat to big oil and legacy auto. Nothing new here.

how much is elon/tesla paying you to post this?

hey now, can't we loathe Musk and the big oil companies too?

elon musk isn't gonna fuck you. you don't have to do this

And tesla shits on public transport...

Btw its to late to save big oil, EU already stated that all new cars from 2030 on can't be Combustion Engine powered.

Big oil already has massive investments in lithium. Big oil is already ready to transition to big lithium, they're just squeezing out the last bits of cash they can in oil.

Did anyone think that as EVs became popular that industrial giants like ExxonMobil would just disappear? No, big oil is already positioned to be with us another 100+ years as they strip mine the planet for lithium.

Mass transit is what was always needed, but there's little to no profit there. With EVs, it's just the same song and dance as oil but with batteries this time.