If you’ve spent much time scrolling through TikTok, you may have seen videos from accounts like @tybuggyreviews, an account with 500,000 followers that posts only videos selling products in its TikTok shop.
The creator, who identifies himself as Tarik Garrett on his verified Instagram account, used the @tybuggyreviews account to promote supplements, water flossers, earbuds, workout machines, Bible study guides, probiotics for women to combat “down there odor,” watch bands, inspirational hoodies, inspirational t-shirts, face massagers, foot massagers, rhinestone necklaces, oil pulling kits, colon cleansers and more to his viewers.
With TikTok Shop, creators earn a commission for every sale linked to their account. Garrett’s product videos have tens of thousands of views, some over a million. But one particularly popular post on his account was a 2019 article by an unnamed publication called ” of The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies.
“Now I know why they’re trying to take down TikTok. This book? This herbal remedy book? They don’t want us to see this book,” Garrett said at the beginning of the shop video. This is a reference to a new US law that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to sell the app or ban it. TikTok is challenging the law in court, arguing that lawmakers who cited national security concerns for passing the bill haven’t adequately argued why those concerns should trump the First Amendment. To be clear, the law doesn’t cite the First Amendment. The Lost Book of Herbal RemediesIt cited the availability of on the TikTok shop as the reason for banning the platform.
Garrett posted a promotional video for the book on April 15. As of May 7, the video has been viewed more than 16 million times. Garrett opens the book to a page of recommendations, urging users to take a screenshot (and buy it for themselves) before it’s too late.
The camera showed a lengthy list of plants that the book said could treat cancer, drug addiction, heart attacks and herpes. The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies The product Garrett linked to has sold over 60,000 units on the TikTok shop. To put that figure in perspective, it typically takes between 5,000 and 10,000 sales in a week to make it onto a bestseller list.
And the interest isn’t just limited to TikTok: On the same day that Garrett posted his video, Google search interest for the book’s title spiked. The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies As of Wednesday, May 8, the book is ranked #10 on Amazon’s book bestseller list and has been atop Amazon’s bestseller rankings for the past three weeks.
I sent Garrett a few videos promoting his book, as well as about half a dozen highly viewed promotional videos by other creators. The Lost Book of Herbal Remediesreached out to TikTok for comment. A TikTok spokesperson said that videos that link to shop products must follow both the community guidelines, which prohibit medical misinformation, and the shop policies, which prohibit misleading content. If a video only violates the shop policies, they simply remove the link to the shop, but leave the content up. If it violates the community guidelines, the video will be removed.
The violations were enough for TikTok to remove his product review account. Garrett did not respond to a series of emailed questions.
How e-commerce took over TikTok
TikTok has long been good at guessing what people want to watch, but not so good at monetizing the trick. When the platform launched its shops feature in the US last fall, its “For You” page pivoted, pushing a slew of videos like those made by @tybuggyreviews, hoping that people would buy TikTok-trending products directly from the store.
The result is a “For You” page that is constantly interrupted by pitches for random products. For example, right now my “For You” page is full of ads for creators dancing to a German song about rhubarb, misbehaving pet birds, disordered non-binary people, and alternative wellness creators trying to sell me oils, mushrooms, and books.
The shop ads I see are personalized, as is much of the content pushed on TikTok, but my TikTok shop recommendations are heavily influenced by my coverage of stories like this one. Results may vary. Still, I think it’s important to understand that TikTok is Remedy The company has been successful in making the books relevant beyond a niche audience, and it has profited from a surge in sales on the store, some of which come from creators who explicitly promote unproven cancer “cures” and conspiracy theories on the platform.
Like the Shadow Work Journal, a workbook that went viral on TikTok shops a few months ago as a mental health tool, though its effectiveness is questionable. The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies is part of a surge in wellness creators, brands, and products that have found success reaching new audiences through TikTok shops.
Shop videos have become something of a “loophole” for health misinformation on TikTok, said Evan Thornburg, a bioethicist who posts on TikTok as @gaygtownbae and studies misinformation and public health. Creators and people who want to sell something know that Shop videos will be given priority treatment on the “For You” page. Some creators use them to promote dangerous health claims. Thornburg noted that in other cases, “it’s not necessarily the creators promoting the material that are disinformation, but the material that’s persuading people to buy that is disinformation.”
A recipe for misinformation
The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies The book contains misleading information, and the creators appear to be spreading misleading health claims in order to sell the book. The video promoting the book’s inclusion in the TikTok shop, which has been viewed nearly 1 million times, is essentially a series of ominous AI-generated images and AI narration. The video claims that the book contains secrets hidden in ancient books in the “Vatican Library,” The Lost Book of Chinese Herbal Medicine Prior to its appearance on TikTok, the book was only available on the “dark web.” (Not true; the book is for sale on Amazon and the author’s website, and appears to be available in some university libraries and public library systems.) Another Shop video, which has been viewed more than 1 million times, is captioned with the words, “Cures over 550 diseases, even cancer.”
I scanned a copy The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies The book is being released this week. The 300-page book includes a disclaimer stating that the book is intended to “provide information about natural remedies, treatments, and remedies that people have used in the past,” that it is not medical advice, and that “some of the treatments and remedies presented in this book are not in compliance with FDA guidelines.” The book is divided into two parts: an alphabetical list of diseases and symptoms and plants that the author believes can cure or treat them, as well as an alphabetical list of plants arranged by region and instructions on how to prepare them.
The list of illnesses included in the book includes suggested treatments for cancer, some sexually transmitted diseases, mental illnesses, and digestive disorders. To name a few highlights, the book lists treatments for smallpox, streptococcal infections, and staphylococcal infections. There is also a section on emergency medicine, including plant remedies for serious conditions such as internal bleeding and poisoning.
Flip through the plant entries and you’ll find a list of claims that refer to uncited studies. One entry touting ashwagandha’s “anti-tumor effects” and ability to “kill cancer cells” mentions “studies” but fails to mention that, although there are indications that ashwagandha may slow the growth of cancer cells, these studies were conducted in rodents and have yet to be replicated in humans.
One of the book’s authors, Nicole Apelian, did not respond to an emailed request for comment. She is active on TikTok, but it is not her main social media platform. Her TikTok profile encourages her 17,000 followers to check out Instagram, where she has 100,000 followers. Apelian also runs an herb shop featured in the book, Nicole’s Apothecary, which sells some of the tinctures she recommends, and sells memberships to an online “academy” for fans of the book, as well as promoting paid appearances and workshops.
As journalists, there’s a pattern that becomes apparent when we write about health misinformation on social media: Something is viewed, we try to understand the context by assessing the actual or potential harm, we contact the company to inquire about the harmful stuff, the video or post or group may or may not be removed, the company issues a statement and lays out their policy on misinformation, and then we publish the story. This happens over and over again because writing about misleading health information is a game of whack-a-mole that gets harder and harder to win.
Thornburg, the bioethicist, gave a few reasons why I can’t get out of this hellhole. First, meaningful moderation on a platform like TikTok just isn’t feasible. Social media companies, they say, “will never prioritize the effort that needs to be continually put into moderating misinformation.”
Most sites rely on a combination of human moderators and AI, and it’s difficult to create automated moderation tools that don’t censor permitted content. For example, health misinformation targeted at minority communities often exploits legitimate distrust of medical professionals and institutions that is rooted in recent history. AI tools designed to moderate keywords associated with this kind of targeted misinformation could also sweep in criticism of the health care system in general.
And second, creators profiting from health misinformation know what to say and where to say it, and are adept at “lifeboating” their audience from one platform to another when necessary: “TikTok’s virality and algorithms are aggressive, so you’re going to have people generating interest in something through TikTok,” Thornburg says, and then those profiles are linked to their Instagram, Linktree, and YouTube channels.
Health misinformation on social media is a moving target with countless interactions. The TikTok Shop is a hotspot right now. It may become something else on another platform in time. Tracking this content from platform to platform, harm to harm, viral video to viral video is exhausting. I’m exhausted.
At the end of the interview, Thornburg shared the question that drives much of their work in this space: “Who is responsible for what’s harmful and who is going to regulate it or hold it to certain standards?” In many cases, the person behind each piece of content isn’t actually the driving force behind their motivation to create it.
As a result of my reporting, Garrett’s account was removed, along with other popular videos promoting the book, which has already sold tens of thousands of copies. As long as the incentive remains, it won’t be long before the next product promising miracles starts polluting my “For You” page.
