It’s been long known that influencer platforms track engagement rates, brand affiliation, and other relevant statistics. Some claim to be able to tell how real your following is. Most of them struggle in some manner and it’s hard to tell which ones are most accurate. (My bio literally says based in Dallas and yet one platform told people I was based in Kentucky… so yeah, take all of them with a grain of salt). However, there is a new things that these platforms are measuring. How risky are your platforms based on things such as racism, adult content, political content, and unsafe behavior. I’m not here to provide commentary at the time, but just to educate.
Related Content: My Favorite Photography & Video Equipment as a Travel Blogger/Influencer
How Risky is Your Content?
We recently logged in to an influencer campaign platform known as Captiv-8 that gives different statistics. Even then I wonder how accurate they are. Apparently from my one post about cirque du Soleil, I suddenly have a huge brand affinity (I mean don’t get me wrong, they’re great! I just really haven’t talked about them so it’s a weird thing to associate me with).
However, this time I noticed a new section labeled brand safety. It has all of the different accounts listed out with a rating as well as the number of risky posts.
You can click each one and it will show the risky posts. Now some most of these seem to be flat our wrong. I’ll share below some of the ones that were rated and why.
This post was rated for racism. I see where they were coming from, but not sure I would consider this a risky or unsafe post.
This post got flagged as political content. I cannot see anywhere how this is political. I did notice that 50-75% of posts just seemed to have no basis for being flagged.
I couldn’t help but notice that so many of my Dia De Muertos posts were flagged for “Unsafe Behaviors”. Just one example, but multiple blog posts, facebook posts, etc were flagged. Perhaps because of the translation of Muertos or a mention of death?
Related Content: The Basics: How to Get Started Blogging in Three Easy Steps
This one was flagged for adult content. It’s a photoshoot with reindeer, super kid friendly.
This one was flagged for racism. Again, I see where they’re coming from, but sharing straight facts about history just seems a little light. It seems like they have a low threshold for what is risky and just about anything can get caught in it including things completely off.
Is This Something We’ll See Moving Forward
It’s known pretty regularly that brands often stalk influencers profiles before getting to know you, but this is likely another method that will be used. So far, I’m only aware of this on one platform, but if it’s here I am imagine its on more even if its not displayed like this site.
Clearly many are off (I had another one of a kid friendly polar express ride that was labeled for profanity). Based on this platform alone it looks like they are screening for racism (or anything that talks about it), political content, unsafe behaviors, profanity, and adult content. Based on what is just an assumption with very little data, a lot of it seems to be keyword based (shooting apples, deadcat ranch, day of the dead, etc) all seem to bring up unsafe behaviors. I only have a guess though to be sure.
Either way, this is likely to continue. When influencers get cancelled often brands feel the effects of that too and have to do their own PR control so it’s likely they’re doing everything to have their bases covered. Maybe it will get more accurate. At least on this platform they can reference the posts to make their own assessments… if they choose to do that.
Like I said, this is not to provide any opinion, rather to give as in depth understanding as I have found since I only stumbled across it and hadn’t seen it before. I believe it’s important we are always aware of things going on in all aspects of the influencer space.
If you want to stay up to date with the latest influencer an industry happenings sign up for our newsletter and course.
Last Updated 1 year ago by Jessica Serna | Published: January 5, 2023
