TheNootropicReviewer

I am not opposed to paying affiliate commissions to people promoting us. Far from it. I love it when people promote us and get people interested in quality and the education aspect of nootropics/supplements. I am more than happy to reward people for creating that content and helping us to grow. However, the issue is a legal one. This isn't even some potential thing we are worried about. It's a very real legal risk that we have been bit by before. We have been sued multiple times for this. I settled half a dozen lawsuits last year, in fact. I am dealing with one lawsuit right now and a potential other one coming up soon. My whole damn life now seems to be jumping from lawsuit to lawsuit from pathetic assholes trying to blackmail and profit off us using the legal system as a weapon. I've learned more about our fucked up legal system these past 8 years than I care to know. I've spent amounts of money you would not even believe defending ourselves from obscure laws and very specific statutory constructions/justifications that you just never would have thought about till you got hit with a lawsuit for it. There are countless lawyers out there who's whole existence is built around reading obscure laws, rulings, and precedents in the various federal districts around the US, then building blackmail lawsuits around them. I have become so jaded with our legal system, and so disappointed in our country as a whole, because of all the shit I have dealt with. I can't explain how draining it all is for me. I want to build a company that is a force for change in this industry; a force for good for consumers. However, we constantly get attacked and blackmailed for it. These people are leeches on society. They provide no benefit to anyone. They exist solely to suck from the success of others. It's disgusting.

So specifically what am I talking about? Well the way the laws are written in the US at the moment state that any statements that we allow to show on our site are considered our marketing statements. This means customer reviews that we allow to be on the site are considered OUR STATEMENTS by the government. This is why I have to edit out references to diseases and other wording that causes legal risk for us. That topic has been the crux of multiple of our lawsuits we have been hit with. Another aspect of the way the laws are written is that any statements made by people/sites we link to can be held as our marketing statements, too. This is why we no longer link studies or provide citations on our blogs on the site. I would love to link everyone to the research we base our blogs and product descriptions off of. However, if we link to a scientific study that talks about a disease, or discusses structure/function claims on a synthetic, the FDA (and consequently, fuckhead lawyers) can consider the statements made in those studies to be our marketing statements as well. This means if we state that Sabroxy helps with attention issues, and we link to a study discussing ADHD as evidence of that, the FDA considers us trying to sell Sabroxy as a drug. This is because ADHD is a disease, and if we link to evidence of one of our products helping to treat a disease, that means we are selling a drug, not a supplement. This is the reason we don't link to ANY scientific studies on the site anymore. If anything said in those studies can be considered our marketing statements simply by us linking the study itself, then the only solution is to not link the study at all... It's fucking asinine I can't link valid research on our site, but this is the fucked up world we live in. That brings us to the specific issue at hand in this case: affiliates. So any reviews/statements that show up on our site, or any statements in studies/articles we link, can be considered our marketing statements. What else can be considered our marketing statements? Any statements made by affiliates of ours that we compensate in any way. Yes, just by merely paying someone an affiliate commission, we now take on the risk for the statements those people make. This means that if we approve someone as an affiliate of ours, and they discuss a disease in relation to our products, the FDA can then consider our product a drug and come after us. More commonly, shithead lawyers can use that threat to blackmail us as well. This means that anyone we do approve as an affiliate we have to police regularly. I have a team of people that do that every week. We go out to our affiliate sites, read their content, and watch their videos. If they discuss anything that puts our products at risk for legal issues, we have to get them to remove it or drop them as an affiliate. It sucks major dick, trust me. I don't want to drop affiliates. I don't want to pay for a team of people to police what other people are saying about our products. Believe me, I would love to just let people talk about what they want to talk about and leave them be. However, I don't have that luxury anymore. I can't just let people go off and discuss whatever they want to if they are an affiliate of ours. I have to police their statements as if it was a member of my team making them. It's nuts. It's idiotic. It's so fucking bassackwards that I get upset just thinking about it. Not only do I have to police what I say, and what every member of my 85 person team says. Now I have to fucking police what other people that don't even work for me say... I wish I could just say: fuck it, we'll take the risk. However, I can't. We have been sued and will continue to be sued if I don't protect us. I agree it is shitty. I agree it is bullshit. I agree it is unfair. I wish our legal system wasn't so fucked up, and that we actually had freedom and liberty in this country. However, we have been sold a lie our whole lives. We are all slaves to a system that doesn't give a fuck about what is right. We exist in a system meant to maintain the fucked up status quo over anything else. It takes a lot of energy every day to keep pushing forward and stay positive through it all.

So why are we being targeted so much? I've asked myself that question many times now. Maybe we are just really good at getting in front of people and being noticed. Perhaps we are victims of our own success. We are noticeable and get the attention of a lot of people. That's good for growth and my ultimate mission. However, that means we get noticed by the scum of the Earth more as well. Also, like it or not, we set a lot of trends in this industry. Lots of eyes are on us every day, monitoring what we are doing, waiting for us to fuck up. So what might fly under the radar on other sites with other brands gets noticed with us. Then we get hit with the lawsuits because of it. Also, it's just a fact that the more success you get in this country, the more people try to take it away from you. It's a tale you will find rings true if you talk to any business owner in any industry in the US. Things are easy when you are small. It's when you start growing and succeeding that you start getting noticed. It's when you start posing a threat to the entrenched interests that you get a target on your back. Competitors absolutely use shady tactics to try and throw hurdles in your way if you start threatening their market share too much. We are constantly pushing this industry in a more open, honest, and scientifically validated direction. It's in many company's interests to keep things the way they are. They are making a lot of money selling people untested garbage and lying to them. Pushing the industry in the way we are threatens that profit. Companies don't like to be forced to change, so they lash out instead. It's a fact that I have come to terms with. If I am going to keep pushing forward, I am going to have to fight a lot of people along the way. That's just how it is, and I can either accept that or just give up and admit defeat. However, I don't give up. I won't give up. I am going to advance this industry and drag it kicking and screaming to where I think it needs to be if it takes my whole life to do. This means that I have to be smarter than the people trying to stop me. This means I have to be more strategic and tactical than the ones threatening our existence. This unfortunately means that we have to be very strict on what we will and will not allow. If it results in legal risk for us, we have to not allow it. I fully agree it's not fair. It sucks. I would like nothing more than to never have to think about any of this stupid legal shit ever again. However, I don't have that luxury. If I let my guard down, I will get fucked. It happens every time I do, so I no longer let my guard down.

So that's the situation. It's not that I don't want to reward people who are promoting our brand. I would love nothing more than to do that. However, we have to be strict on what is and is not said for that to happen. I have to be sure that we are not opening ourselves up to another lawsuit by approving someone as an affiliate. I have to protect my team and our legal footing if we are ever to accomplish my mission. It does nobody any good if we get sued out of existence.