Anti Ad Ad Club Pays TikTokers For Takedowns Of Facebook, Palantir, Tesla & More

Remember when TikTok was about to be sold? Seems like a lifetime ago. The social media app is still going strong. Which pleases the masters of sociological dysfunction over at MSCHF as their latest project is centered on TikTok, as much as it is the destructive weight of political capitalism TikTok finds itself under.

In an attempted takedown of some of the largest corporations purporting evil on society, Anti Ad Ad Club is a way for TikTok creators to spread a clear and justified anti-capitalist message, including TikTok itself. The app states there are nine evil brands that need takedowns, apparently in the form of cheeky TikTok dances.

Here’s how it works for TikTok creators. Use an Anti Ad Ad Club sound in a TikTok (making up some weird dance is probably encouraged). If the view count is hit, then creators can send proof to the MSCHF TikTok review team and in between chugging two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew Code Red, will verify that the submission belongs to the creator(s). Based on which sound TikTok creators used, they will get paid anywhere from $10 to $20k.

Like its campaign for Finger On The App, MSCHF seems to have a venture capital fund just for these wild social experiments. Sure, there’s a level of social good with something like the Anti Ad Ad Club, but there is also a level of sheer whimsy to it so it makes for an interesting juxtaposition of ideals. Regardless, the chance for TikTok creators to stick it to the man and possibly get paid for it is an appealing social project from a participation point of view as well as just sheer curiosity.

At the lowest payment level is the attack on TikTok itself. For greater than 5K views creators can earn $10 for using the sound that attacks TikTok for content suppression. Over 50k views using the sound attacking Amazon for human rights violations and union busting nets a creator $100. The NFL, Tesla are the next levels, the Facebook takedown for proliferating hate speech and fake news is worth $4k if it gets more than two million views and that’s just mid-level. At the top, if creators net over 10 million views on a post slamming Palantir for using big data for evil, creators can make out with $20k. Considering Palantir’s involvement with police surveillance, that might be a risk. Hence the payout.

It should be made clear that these claims are repeated as stated on the Anti Ad Ad club website, though much has been written on each one to come to a base conclusion about the overall behavior of these companies.

The sounds are set to the tune of popular pop rock songs spanning a few decades and replace the lyrics with snarky phrases that sound like they were recording in a bathroom with the fan on. For instance, Billy Joel’s classic “We Didn’t Start The Fire” has been replaced by a slam on Fashion Nova for producing its product under sweatshop conditions.

I’m not sure how long this project is going to last. There will likely be a flurry of activity as it hits the news wires and creators start downloading sounds to upload to their individual TikToks in a quest for views and cash. The legality of all this, per usual for MSCHF, is questionable. The sounds are clearly parody, and the takedowns are based on well-reported news items and not just conjecture. So there is some background to all this. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the cease and desist letters from arriving in the past.

One thing we should takeaway from all this is that often, corporations are not working in our best interests, they are working in their best interests. That’s how it works in a capitalist society. We just are fuel for the money machines that will keep on humming no matter what snide remarks we dance to on TikTok.