Because they're bigger there's also a bigger target on they're backs from other YouTubers looking to make a name or that have personal grudges and the old media too. Remember what happened to pewdiepie?
If I'm being too we could see some mainstream outlets pick this story up. I don't thinks it's likely though.
InfluenceLogic is associated with:
Save The Children (?)
TelaDoc (parent company of BetterHelp)
UGG (?)
BetterHelp
InfluenceLogic is the actual company behind CreatorHealth, which has no public facing information at all. No copyright, no company, nothing. The only reason I know InfluenceLogic owns CreatorHealth is a tenuous connection between joel@creatorhealth.org and joel@influencelogic.org that Andy Warski allowed me to see by showing me his affiliate dashboard.
This is their 'How we Do It' page basically just saying they get YT creators to shill for them.
Here's the people behind the company.
Oh look who it is.
Joel Robison, CEO of InfluenceLogic and VidFall.
LinkedIn
Their blog is full of gross marketing shit but not particularly interesting. https://archive.is/WfoQs
It looks like this is about a dead end, as far as I can see, there is a large network of companies preying on the depressed and vulnerable. Joel Robison set up a front called CreatorHealth specifically to pump this garbage to as many people as humanly possible under the guise of helping people. He must have known that what he was doing was scummy because there is no information about his company or him on CreatorHealth, despite InfluenceLogic proudly naming him. Even the domain is protected by GoDaddy domain privacy, something you have to go out of your way to pay for to get. It was meant to be a buffer, a demilitarized zone, between the gross InfluenceLogic marketing system and the friendly CreatorHealth organization.
This is just one of their blog articles.
The ROI of working with small youtubers is great. If someone talks to the same 1000 people every day, you pay him $1000 to shill your shit, you'll probably make that back easy. That's what they say. That's why they went after many many mid-sized YT creators instead of just the big names.
I feel bad they fell for it, and I'm not going to say someone like Andy Warski is a piece of shit for trying to monetize his channel, but on the other hand I personally feel a sense of accountability to the forum. I shill some affiliate stuff like PIA (look here's my shill link), but I've never once told someone to use something I personally do not use every day. The only creator who seemed upfront about wanting to try this and not liking it is the qt ginger thot, which says a lot if random qt ginger thot is willing to do more due diligence for the products they sell over fucking Boogie.
Youtubers shilling scams isn't something new. Remember Full Sail "University"? The for-profit college that takes tens of thousands of dollars from poor saps for a useless degree.
So regarding Kati Morton, the thot therapist. She seems to be tied VERY closely to the company. Her linkedin strongly hints towards her being the co-founder of betterhelp. Quote, "We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience." The timing fits, the other descriptions fit such as a scalable model with a 450,000,000 strong marketplace. Interestingly she claims to have "strong traction" before the company was even produced which suggests she knew she would be advertised all over youtube before she even made it. Its mentioned separately to her other company too so its not the same company.
Co Founder Undisclosed
December 2011 – Present 6 years 11 months
Santa Monica, CA
We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience.
High Fidelity Wireframe
MVP
We have strong traction
We're scalable
TAM: 450,000,000
I'm also fairly sure I've seen her elsewhere tied to betterhelp by name as a part of their company, but I can't find it so take that with a pinch of salt.
As an aside, she annoys me. She is a marriage councillor, but she comes on to the Shane Dawson video claiming to be a clinical psychologist. I happened to watch the videos with actual doctors and their take was that she has the knowledge and understanding of someone who has no education and simply read a wikipedia article. All she is doing, in fact, is reading from the diagnostic manual, misunderstanding how said diagnostic manual works (suggesting she has never used it before), and stating very heavily disputed "facts" as though they were accurate. And whilst I'd like to say Shane wasn't educated and clearly doesn't understand mental health, their take was that he knows what he is doing is inaccurate and is purposefully cutting up the interview to make it seem worse along with purposefully twisting the explanations.
She portrays herself as a clinical psychologist, her linkedin even states that she has spent some time to at least a minimal degree inside a clinical setting, but from what I was told she likely just sat inside the interviews as a trainee then left (timing suggests it was intentionally to learn the basics of clinical psychology for betterhelp) and she displays an incredibly obvious lack of understanding towards anything that would make her qualified as far as clinical psychology goes (such as her involvement in betterhelp). A lack of understanding shown beyond just the Shane interview, that is.
As unfortunate as it is, corrupted companies aren’t anything new and almost always whenever they finally get what they deserve, someone else takes the credit.
InfluenceLogic is associated with:
Save The Children (?)
TelaDoc (parent company of BetterHelp)
UGG (?)
BetterHelp
InfluenceLogic is the actual company behind CreatorHealth, which has no public facing information at all. No copyright, no company, nothing. The only reason I know InfluenceLogic owns CreatorHealth is a tenuous connection between joel@creatorhealth.org and joel@influencelogic.org that Andy Warski allowed me to see by showing me his affiliate dashboard.
This is their 'How we Do It' page basically just saying they get YT creators to shill for them. View attachment 557985
Their blog is full of gross marketing shit but not particularly interesting. https://archive.is/WfoQs
It looks like this is about a dead end, as far as I can see, there is a large network of companies preying on the depressed and vulnerable. Joel Robison set up a front called CreatorHealth specifically to pump this garbage to as many people as humanly possible under the guise of helping people. He must have known that what he was doing was scummy because there is no information about his company or him on CreatorHealth, despite InfluenceLogic proudly naming him. Even the domain is protected by GoDaddy domain privacy, something you have to go out of your way to pay for to get. It was meant to be a buffer, a demilitarized zone, between the gross InfluenceLogic marketing system and the friendly CreatorHealth organization.
The ROI of working with small youtubers is great. If someone talks to the same 1000 people every day, you pay him $1000 to shill your shit, you'll probably make that back easy. That's what they say. That's why they went after many many mid-sized YT creators instead of just the big names.
From the looks of the “How They Do It” page, they know what the future is at least statistically.
So for the time being, it looks like they’re not going anywhere any time soon.
So I did some digging on the Way-Back machine.I wasn't expecting to find much other than some archives of the site in its founding days. Looking back though the domain name (www.betterhelp.com) has been registered to some interesting sites, with the earliest archive going back to 13/Oct/99.
Wether or not it has anything to do with what the site as we know it know I dont know. But the scammer-esque aspect that oozes of the site in its pre BetterHelp Therapist days is too stanky too ignore. Gonna dump what I have, sorted from 1999-March 2016 (Site has stayed static format wise since then). All dates are categorized by available archives of that day, and not accurate enough to pinpoint site changes, not that it matters much.
As a side note I know the domain could've been purchased by the BetterHelp company off some dude with the BetterHelp.com handle, but the early 2008 activity of this domain just makes it a lil more suspicious than that. See what you think.
The origins of the Greatest Online Therapy solution had its humble beginnings as a late 90s internet porn site. All links on the page just lead to pages that look the exact same, the classic porno rabbit hole. This is a common theme you'll see with betterhelp.com .
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/19991013071325/https://www.betterhelp.com
2: Better Life International (11/May/00)
Better Life International is founded, along with a tacky, vomit inducing mess of a website. And whats the sale product? Domains. 391 of them, boasting 1/2 million hits of traffic. At first I thought it might have been the porno domains this guy had, but the list is mostly full of Travel website domains (more on that later).
Updated frontpage, and started pawning off the mass domain sale as a charity benefit for muh sick daddy. Page for the Cancer Benefit is the same font and color as the domain one. Does the same with all the side links too, just duplicate pages with different titles and pictures. Same layout, same color and format, same links.
To be supported by our remaining 300+ web properties,
IT Business, Music, Art & Health training center,
which are all in the early stages of development
just as our Cancer Benefit Festivals are.
Guess what? Still more domains. However, aside from just trying to sell them, the site began linking to travel brooker esque sites, that all (big shocker) look just the same as each other
Now up until 2008 the betterhelp.com address would always bring you to Venere. However, Venere was bought by EXPEDIA in 2008, which is when the betterhelp.com website returned to its normal domain, no re-direction. Its here however that we see the early framework of the betterhelp.com we are talking about now.
5. betterhelp.com (2008-Present)
A quote from the front page, with the earliest available archive of the site, post its (official) birth in 2008:
The self-help marketplace:
Research firm Marketdata estimated the "self-improvement" market as worth $8.5 billion in 2003 — including infomercials, mail-order catalogs, holistic institutes, books, audio cassettes, motivational speaker seminars, the personal coaching market, weight-loss and stress-management programs. Marketdata projected that the total market size would grow to over $11 billion by 2008.
Woah, spooky huh? Almost feels like their seeing a market to capitalize on for those who need help on focusing on their (((INDIVIDUAL))) selves. While not too convincing (see photo of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to..." photo) of a sale, you can defiantly see the seeds of what it has become (be it the same person/people behind it).
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20080723233059/https://www.betterhelp.com
The site had a few touch ups in 2009, but its around the 23/Aug/13 that the site is blank, but for a few words:
We are in private alpha.
If you were invited to the alpha please click here.
To join the alpha please send an email to join@betterhelp.com.
Thats it.
Honestly just thought that the 90s porn site beginnings for the domain name was funny, decided to throw everything I came across out there. Pertinent or not the early 2008 era of this website gives me that weird vibe it might be the same people. Cant wait to watch all the YouTubers implode on themselves tryna get out off this.
So regarding Kati Morton, the thot therapist. She seems to be tied VERY closely to the company. Her linkedin strongly hints towards her being the co-founder of betterhelp. Quote, "We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience." The timing fits, the other descriptions fit such as a scalable model with a 450,000,000 strong marketplace. Interestingly she claims to have "strong traction" before the company was even produced which suggests she knew she would be advertised all over youtube before she even made it. Its mentioned separately to her other company too so its not the same company.
Co Founder Undisclosed
December 2011 – Present 6 years 11 months
Santa Monica, CA
We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience.
High Fidelity Wireframe
MVP
We have strong traction
We're scalable
TAM: 450,000,000
I'm also fairly sure I've seen her elsewhere tied to betterhelp by name as a part of their company, but I can't find it so take that with a pinch of salt.
As an aside, she annoys me. She is a marriage councillor, but she comes on to the Shane Dawson video claiming to be a clinical psychologist. I happened to watch the videos with actual doctors and their take was that she has the knowledge and understanding of someone who has no education and simply read a wikipedia article. All she is doing, in fact, is reading from the diagnostic manual, misunderstanding how said diagnostic manual works (suggesting she has never used it before), and stating very heavily disputed "facts" as though they were accurate. And whilst I'd like to say Shane wasn't educated and clearly doesn't understand mental health, their take was that he knows what he is doing is inaccurate and is purposefully cutting up the interview to make it seem worse along with purposefully twisting the explanations.
She portrays herself as a clinical psychologist, her linkedin even states that she has spent some time to at least a minimal degree inside a clinical setting, but from what I was told she likely just sat inside the interviews as a trainee then left (timing suggests it was intentionally to learn the basics of clinical psychology for betterhelp) and she displays an incredibly obvious lack of understanding towards anything that would make her qualified as far as clinical psychology goes (such as her involvement in betterhelp). A lack of understanding shown beyond just the Shane interview, that is.
It's funny how in PewDiePie's video (the one on Shane's Jake Paul series) he points out how she calls pretty much anything a sign of being a "sociopath"
How much do you want to bet that SHE ends up being the sociopath? She is starting to get the vibes after pretty much running this scam site for the mentally ill and then acting like she is the victim on her Instagram
So regarding Kati Morton, the thot therapist. She seems to be tied VERY closely to the company. Her linkedin strongly hints towards her being the co-founder of betterhelp. Quote, "We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience." The timing fits, the other descriptions fit such as a scalable model with a 450,000,000 strong marketplace. Interestingly she claims to have "strong traction" before the company was even produced which suggests she knew she would be advertised all over youtube before she even made it. Its mentioned separately to her other company too so its not the same company.
Co Founder Undisclosed
December 2011 – Present 6 years 11 months
Santa Monica, CA
We're an early stage healthcare startup that delivers professional mental health knowledge to a global audience.
High Fidelity Wireframe
MVP
We have strong traction
We're scalable
TAM: 450,000,000
I'm also fairly sure I've seen her elsewhere tied to betterhelp by name as a part of their company, but I can't find it so take that with a pinch of salt.
As an aside, she annoys me. She is a marriage councillor, but she comes on to the Shane Dawson video claiming to be a clinical psychologist. I happened to watch the videos with actual doctors and their take was that she has the knowledge and understanding of someone who has no education and simply read a wikipedia article. All she is doing, in fact, is reading from the diagnostic manual, misunderstanding how said diagnostic manual works (suggesting she has never used it before), and stating very heavily disputed "facts" as though they were accurate. And whilst I'd like to say Shane wasn't educated and clearly doesn't understand mental health, their take was that he knows what he is doing is inaccurate and is purposefully cutting up the interview to make it seem worse along with purposefully twisting the explanations.
She portrays herself as a clinical psychologist, her linkedin even states that she has spent some time to at least a minimal degree inside a clinical setting, but from what I was told she likely just sat inside the interviews as a trainee then left (timing suggests it was intentionally to learn the basics of clinical psychology for betterhelp) and she displays an incredibly obvious lack of understanding towards anything that would make her qualified as far as clinical psychology goes (such as her involvement in betterhelp). A lack of understanding shown beyond just the Shane interview, that is.
I fucking called it. I know it's not perfect proof, but I felt like she had something to do with this beyond just shilling. She was way too connected to people who were suddenly shilling the service. It could have been coincidence but it seemed odd.
Also yeah, ignoring entertainment value, it really just felt like she was reading the DSM-5 and speculating. I'm 100% fine with that from an entertainment perspective, but anyone mistaking it for an actual diagnostic attempt is mistaken. As for Shane, I'm sure he's just focused on getting views. That seems to be common these days on Youtube. Morals don't matter as long as you make money, I guess.
This is worse than getting no treatment because these clowns sound like amateur hour all the way down. I normally don't encourage violence, but these people need to be punched, and so do the Youtubers shilling for them.
It's funny how in PewDiePie's video (the one on Shane's Jake Paul series) he points out how she calls pretty much anything a sign of being a "sociopath"
How much do you want to bet that SHE ends up being the sociopath? She is starting to get the vibes after pretty much running this scam site for the mentally ill and then acting like she is the victim on her Instagram
That's basically what people who don't understand how psychology works do. They latch onto anything which is remotely covered by the explanation despite being normal behaviours (driving fast, for example) rather than looking only for behaviours done to such an excess that it negatively effects their lives (joining an illegal street racing scene). I don't think shes a sociopath, despite her claims you have to be pretty extreme to get that sort of diagnosis, but she certainly does some very disgusting and immoral behaviours and a look into her career history shows that she has no qualms about using and exploiting people in need for her own personal gain. Its not sociopathic, but it does make her a very shitty person.
I fucking called it. I know it's not perfect proof, but I felt like she had something to do with this beyond just shilling. She was way too connected to people who were suddenly shilling the service. It could have been coincidence but it seemed odd.
Also yeah, ignoring entertainment value, it really just felt like she was reading the DSM-5 and speculating. I'm 100% fine with that from an entertainment perspective, but anyone mistaking it for an actual diagnostic attempt is mistaken. As for Shane, I'm sure he's just focused on getting views. That seems to be common these days on Youtube. Morals don't matter as long as you make money, I guess.
I'd go so far as to say Phil DeFranco is also involved beyond just being an idiot. I don't have evidence and as a fan I know he's a bit of a sellout, but things just seem to be a little too incestuous and there are too many questions unanswered. For example with a large research team one would imagine Phil DeFranco would be able to look into betterhelp, it sounds like even the slightest glance of their service brings out some pretty big questions to be answered regarding the sheer number of people who review them as scam artists yet he ignores it. Secondly he seems to be at the center of at least a very major push of the service with his company being the referrer to a lot of the biggest names. Thirdly at least the people I've heard of complaining about burnout vocally all seem to be tied to his referral code, though I'm sure there would be someone else better to weigh in on that point. And finally he openly admits to being good friends with Shane Dawson and having worked with him in the past, I believe that may include business-wise too. Well what are the chances that the single biggest referrer has strong ties to the single most popular show about psychology right now which has ties to a co-founder of betterhelp.
And DeFranco was one of the first to report that Shane Dawson "might" be doing a show on Jake Paul along with stating that Shane is great at making horrific people seem human, and then he went on to talk about the backlash Shane Dawson had from that decision repeatedly on later shows which helped make the Shane Dawson video as popular as it is today. All of that follows the style in which DeFranco has promoted things by his own company and friends in the past - he knows exactly how every step of that would play out and made sure to shape the message which he could easily do as one of the main news outlets reporting it.
So I did some digging on the Way-Back machine.I wasn't expecting to find much other than some archives of the site in its founding days. Looking back though the domain name (www.betterhelp.com) has been registered to some interesting sites, with the earliest archive going back to 13/Oct/99.
Wether or not it has anything to do with what the site as we know it know I dont know. But the scammer-esque aspect that oozes of the site in its pre BetterHelp Therapist days is too stanky too ignore. Gonna dump what I have, sorted from 1999-March 2016 (Site has stayed static format wise since then). All dates are categorized by available archives of that day, and not accurate enough to pinpoint site changes, not that it matters much.
As a side note I know the domain could've been purchased by the BetterHelp company off some dude with the BetterHelp.com handle, but the early 2008 activity of this domain just makes it a lil more suspicious than that. See what you think.
The origins of the Greatest Online Therapy solution had its humble beginnings as a late 90s internet porn site. All links on the page just lead to pages that look the exact same, the classic porno rabbit hole. This is a common theme you'll see with betterhelp.com .
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/19991013071325/https://www.betterhelp.com
Better Life International is founded, along with a tacky, vomit inducing mess of a website. And whats the sale product? Domains. 391 of them, boasting 1/2 million hits of traffic. At first I thought it might have been the porno domains this guy had, but the list is mostly full of Travel website domains (more on that later).
Updated frontpage, and started pawning off the mass domain sale as a charity benefit for muh sick daddy. Page for the Cancer Benefit is the same font and color as the domain one. Does the same whit with all hte side links too, just duplicate pages with different titles and pictures. Same layout, same color and format, same links.
Guess what? Still more domains. However, aside from just trying to sell them, the site began linking to travel brooker esque sites, that all (big shocker) look just the same as each other
Now up until 2008 the betterhelp.com address would always bring you to Venere. However, Venere was bought by EXPEDIA in 2008, which is when the betterhelp.com website returned to its normal domain, no re-direction. Its here however that we see the early framework of the betterhelp.com we are talking about now.
5. betterhelp.com (2008-Present)
A quote from the front page, with the earliest available archive of the site, post its (official) birth 2008:
Woah, spooky huh? Almost feels like their seeing a market to capitalize on for those who need help on focusing on their (((INDIVIDUAL))) selves. While not too convincing (see photo of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to..." photo) of a sale, you can defiantly see the seeds of what it has become (be it the same person/people behind it).
Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20080723233059/https://www.betterhelp.com
Thats it.
Honestly just thought that the 90s porn site beginnings for the domain name was funny, decided to throw everything I came across out there. Pertinent or not the early 2008 era of this website gives me that weird vibe it might be the same people. Cant wait to watch all the YouTubers implode on themselves tryna get out off this.
The archived stuff you found ties into the .xml files (still visible in the websites page source) I archived earlier ... essentially they created a buffer site to further hide their tracks or derail research into the company.
I'm disappointed OP. I already knew most of that info from the Memology videos, which you should have IMMEDIATELY linked and cited right at the start...
Good for you, but I was only providing a rundown of the basic information to do with this scam for people unfamiliar. I wanted to compile a written version of all the data for people who don't have time to sit down and watch all 9 parts, which at the time, was the only source of investigation. The Memology videos are all included there, and I do make reference to them.
Being a member of the community myself and seeing how these people work, many of them will do sponsorships without looking into them or really considering what kind of stupid shit they are promoting. Shane’s videos where he sits on a couch and pretends to be emotional are so fucking bad, and just filler space to serve for sponsors. He probably made upwards of 30,000 dollars just for the better help sponsorship in a video where he basically just dramatized a mental disorder to make middle schoolers feel like theyre expert psychologists. Another good rabbit hole to look into it the edurdie sponsorship hole, theres some funny shit in there. Anyway, have a nice day.
we could see some mainstream outlets pick this story up. I don't thinks it's likely though.
