Manus, an AI company Meta acquired for $2 billion last year is running ads promising quick, easy money with AI: Find local businesses without websites or with bad websites, have AI build them one, then call them up and sell it to them.
As part of the campaign, Manus was paying content creators to build out Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts that promote its AI product as an easy, lucrative gig. (The creators' TikTok accounts were taken down after The Verge inquired about them.) Some of these videos would also appear as official ads for Manus, but the posts on the paid creator accounts themselves often obscured their ties to the company …
