i install guardrails in systems designed to trick people

Day 1: They tried to extract over $1M from me with trickery.
Day 621: They paid to walk away.

Survival taught me one thing: when the guardrails are missing, the system eats people alive.

TikTok Shop is proof of it at scale. It’s collapsed the boundary between content and commerce, turning everyday users into unvetted promoters with no advertising guardrails. Teens are especially vulnerable. Most can’t tell if a post reflects real experience or undisclosed promotion.

History has seen this before. Food marketing was once a free-for-all too. It took the FDA’s Nutrition Facts label to make deception unprofitable.

1. Comprehension doubled.

2. Disputes cut by half.

3. Judgment restored: 3 in 4 consumers relied on the label in purchase decisions.

So we ran a blind undercover field study. Over 7 weeks, 302 participants including teens, consumers, and brand managers tested four disclosure formats.

The result: standardized Nutrition Facts style labels restored clarity in under five seconds, cut escalation risk, and slashed cost.

This is more than research. It is the new yardstick for standardized disclosure labels, serving as the reference point for regulators, case law, platform tools, and brand safety standards.

Full study drops Friday on OSF.

Kaeya