Why is Everyone So Depressed?! What Does Your Mental Health, Youtube, and Data Mining Have in Common?

For those of you who haven't kept up with us over the past year or so, we've been quickly rising in youtube advertising and talent sponsorship traveling all over for my company naturalhealthycbd.com and upcoming Blunt creators network. We have been fighting Youtube's changing algorithms, exposing scams not only in CBD but now Youtube as a whole. We know a bit. 

A few years ago a niche youtube group known as "skeptics" were paid to pitch an app called Candid to their audience. The app boasted a free speech community among other great benefits. However, the app actually took information from it's users, fed them into an ai or learning algorithm, later bought by Amazon/ Twitch. If you are familiar with Twitch, it's one of the most censored platforms on the internet. For those who follow Blunt Creators you'll notice they've even removed their livestream area and many streamers have left the platform for Youtube, despite the complaints surrounding the platform. Pewdiepie, one of the most famous youtubers to date, was blamed for the changes to the platform online following the Candid scandal. 

It should have posed as a warning to many creators when Pewdiepie mentioned how off it seemed to be shilling this company where this company was shilled, even joking that he doesn't have the best judgement based on his past and is surprised other youtubers having not thought about this prior to advertising for them. 

Youtube creator Bearing was one of the creators approached by Candid, but was coincidentally one of the creators to help expose it's learning technology. It was youtuber Harmful Opinions that was able to expose that Candid was collecting all messages and posts sent on the app to create the algorithm that was actually responsible to help demonetize youtubers and made it harder for normal folks to earn on the website. This also lead to censorship on Youtube and the removal of channels deemed unworthy of their services or someone someone else wanted silent. Ironically, Harmful Opinions was one coincidentally of the users to be silenced on the platform, but not before his videos could be mirrored onto other channels. 

It was at the request of one of our supporters, who wishes to remain anonymous, that we correct the above information which is currently up to date.If you're reading this, we thank you for helping us to get out the absolute truth! It was suggested by anon, that we should talk to Harmful Opinions regarding his involvement, as he was uncredited. This goes to show everyone that even though all those involved and interviewed have paid absolute respect and credit to Harmful Opinions being the person behind bringing the Candid scandal to the public, anyone in the public would miss that information as they completely deleted him and the views from youtube. So even if his mirrored videos on other channels were uploaded to remain on the platform, the main page while searching Google or Youtube wouldn't feature them and many outside of the Youtube community would credit this to Bearing alone... except Bearing and those who were there and involved. This means youtube successfully silenced Harmful Opinions and while a little digging will find the mirrored content, you will not see it unless you know where to look. This would easily sway public opinion on what really happened and the information they see regarding Candid, which goes just as deep as Betterhelp. We reached out to user Harmful Opinions to verify.

"It wasn't really a case of uncovering it because it wasn't really hidden, but I was the person to
bring attention to the AI/censorship. Bearing didn't realise about it until he saw my vids and then helped me and really nailed the CEO in an interview. My vids can only be found on other people's archive channels because I got banned from YT [Youtube]."

That said, I want to tell you about a company you've probably been seeing a lot lately. Phillip Defranco splattered their ads on his channel along with boogie2988, Adam 22, Jacksfilms, Bart Barker, Dominics and Shane Dawson all having referral links run through an ad campaign headed by Defranco himself and his company, Rouge Rocket. Defranco just now admitted this partnership, though he had not admitted it during his initial advertisement for the company on his daily Defranco Show. 

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I guess I've made Defranco literally dozens of dollars at this point.
Yup! I see it right there! Holy shit!

Boogie2988 seems to be the only Youtuber or influencer to come out about this besides Defranco as of the writing of this article. He was raided and accepted an invitation to the #Killstream with TheRalphRetort. 

"I guess I've made Defranco literally dozens of dollars at this point," Boogie said, laughing when the initial suggestion that Defranco may be behind the company that most know as only as Betterhelp. "Yup! I see it right there! Holy shit!"

Boogie2988 claims to have had no idea Phil was behind anything nor that the company may be a scam that runs tons of online therapy websites across the internet with online chat bots, "certified therapists," and a wide open terms of service that basically allows them to sell those private sessions to anyone they want. 

So now you've got this service, this website, that's saying,
'hey if your depressed, if you're screwed up, if you're suicidal, if things are really dark,
come use our website.'
Then you find out maybe not everybody is licensed like they should be or maybe we can sell your information to whoever we want.

Youtuber, MisterMetokur brought up this and many other great points on the same podcast. Boogie replied that he would be unable to sleep at night if he mislead his audience. Metokur quickly interjected. 

"Well, yeah, but think about the kid that uses a service and finds out, lets say a month
from now or two months from now that the really screwed up shit in their lives, like the abuse
or the depression or the suicidal ideation, got sold to somebody that's training a fucking AI bot or that these personal conversations are just floating out there.
And the other really weird thing is, why did none of the influencers or people involved in this look at the percentages and say okay something is clearly wrong here.
Josh had mentioned, most people went for the two month package that was the one that seemed to be the most attractive. That balances out to about $350 upfront?
So if I pay $350 for a service but the person that referred me is getting $200, that means the person giving the referral is getting the majority of the money, which obviously means the service itself is not what's generating profit for the company."

Turns out cofounder of Betterhelp, Danny Bragonier, is known for much more than just Betterhelp. Infact, his listed work experience is product manager of billy.com, and marketing analyst and media boost for the same company. (Source) 

So that being said, many are coming out such as *winces* Andy Warski, a creator we've had run ins with in the past but must give credit where credit is due, even though he's mentioned they never paid him in full which we suspect is the reason he suddenly came forward but hasn't yet given back the money. Warski releases his emails with Influencerlogic which the internet sleuths have found to be in relation to Betterhelp and many other Teledoc websites for online "chat therapy" services. This information, along with the fact that their terms of service completely waved any liability of the company, even placing vetting of therapists and counselors in the hands of the customer, seems unethical to say the least. 

Some digging by yours truly revealed that Danny Bragonier also was the Senior Project Adviser: Dr. Smidt. California State Polytechnic University. Spring Statistical Analysis of Texas Holdem Poker, another service Defranco commonly shilled not too long ago. (Source) Should the website go missing or get scrubbed, we do have image backlogs as well, however you don't need to dig deep to find more on this as they tell you all about Artificial Intelligence Beating Human Opponents in Poker, mentioning bots and machine learning. This is eerily similar to the data mining used by Candid.

We originally heard of this through youtuber drumr828, and while most of the news was uncovered on the #Killstream credit goes to the person who originally broke this story, Memology101 on youtube. His series "Why Are Youtubers Depressed" is in it's 10th part and compiles all updated information and cover ups the company have began to make. Check out his series below.

While this story is still breaking on twitter and youtube's creator and influencers communities, as advertisers we wonder why we can't provide transparent sales of hemp while literal people are being sold on youtube. I digress. 

What's most important, if you need help talking to someone may make you feel better. Call someone. 

If you need real help, you need a real professional. Call one.

If you or someone you know is in danger, call 911.

We urge everyone to stay as far away as they can from calling upon betterhelp or any service prior to reading their terms. We recently reached out to Keemstar of Dramaalert asking him to reach out to Defranco regarding his partnership with this company, as Defranco seems to think the tour of a website's office will reassure us of his validity and put us all at ease. It will probably release around Shane Dawson's mental health series that will wrap up around mental health day on October 10th, and we all theorize the whole thing being one big drawn out ad for Betterhelp. I wonder if the direction of his series will change, or if Shane will end it by realizing how much of a sociopathic behavior selling his fans mental health for $200 a head seems. Who knows? What we know is for now, you probably should choose traditional therapies to Betterhelp.

Do you have experience with Betterhelp? Contact us! Or share your information with Memology101 on twitter @AntonioChavezSN

We'll try to share more of this story as it comes out, but to stay up to date follow his series!

UPDATE: Our history of Candid has been corrected and Defranco has addressed this situation. A few more people have come forward as well. I've been guided towards a group effort on Kiwifarms. As an advertiser I try to stay away from websites that may have rumor about our sponsored creators. As many know, daily I get their hatewatchers coming to get them fired. I never base my opinions or actions on being harassed by someone else to do so. Not to mention the basic business and assisting sponsored creators I do on a daily basis, making it difficult for me to check in with forums. I've been instructed to email the owner of the website, whom is also helping to open up this story. I've reached out, but feel free to share this article and/or anything inside of it if it assists in getting to the bottom of the situation.

Go down the rabbit hole with Kiwifarms HERE.

Cognitive Thought on youtube does a great video of condensing this in this video beginning HERE! He also suggests one of the counselors to be a sex offender! Check it out. 

Memology101 has posted an 11 part to his amazing crowdsourced investigation HERE. 

AGENTofDOUBT a mental health professional shares his opinion. Videos start HERE.He also exposes a bit more of the networking theory. He as a clinician recognizes the ethics of dual relationships in the mental health field in the above video. He brings up negative reviews, and that there were negative reviews. However as Defranco exposes today, the first page of Google has been scrubbed clean. 

We will update as we find more information and try to help from a sponsor and a patient standpoint.