EXPOSING Liv Schmidt’s SKINNY SOCIETÉ Disordered Instagram Echochamber with Whistleblowing Journalist EJ Dickson

CONTEST INFORMATION! Reminder - there is a special keyword embedded in today’s episode where you can win a $500 gift card to Shoppers Drug Mart. Simply text the keyword plus you’re full name to 925-555. Standard message rates apply. Go to www.seekyoursounds.com/contests for contest rules. Also, if you're a PC optimum member, the Super Redemption Event at Shoppers Drug Mart runs from June 27th until July 2nd, so you can get even more points when you shop in store and online. Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode on the Skinny Societé and SkinnyTok: 00:38 - Introduction to Skinnytok & the Skinny Societé 04:08 - Eating Disorder Relapse Triggers 07:07 - Underage Girls on SkinnyTok 10:48 - Skinny Competition in the Skinny Societé 18:33 - Skinny Luxury Lifestyle 22:16 - The Culty Intersection between SkinnyTok & Fake Empowerment 25:46 - Is SkinnyTok Fighting Obesity? 28:08 - TikTok and Instagram Are Failing Us Check in with today’s amazing guest: EJ Dickson Website: ejdickson.com X: @ejdickson Instagram: @ejdickson References: https://www.thecut.com/article/influencer-liv-schmidt-subscriber-group-chat-weight-loss.html https://www.thecut.com/article/tiktok-banned-skinnytok-hashtag.html https://www.med.unc.edu/psych/eatingdisorders/learn-more/about-eating-disorders/statistics/ Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. Don’t forget to Please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review! It really helps us out. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I was constantly waiting for somebody to say, "You look like you've lost a lot of weight in a very short amount of time. Maybe you should slow down a little bit." Or, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't use prunes as a laxative after you have a big meal." But no, I never saw any of that. It was just constantly reinforcing.

• 0:25Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spitting the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.

• 0:38Abbey Sharp?

  Today's going to be a follow-up story on my solo episode about all things Skinny Talk as we dive deeper into Skinny Talk founder Liv Schmidt's quote-unquote "cult of skinny."

• 0:53Abbey Sharp?

  As part of an investigative story for The Cut, top journalist E.J. Dixon infiltrated Schmidt's subscription-only Instagram group called The Skinny Society. For $20 per month, members were promised Liv's exclusive skinny recipes, workout videos, and personal food diaries, along with access to group DM threads where members could share their weight loss goals, progress, tips, and tricks, and accountability to the skinny life. This article truly had me shook. So I am so excited to have its author, E.J. Dixon, on the podcast today to unpack what she discovered and to discuss the dangers of these online communities.

• 1:37Abbey Sharp?

  Now, a very quick but important trigger warning here that we will be talking about very specific problematic weight loss tips as seen on Skinny Talk. So if that does not feel supportive to your journey right now, please feel free to skip this one out. Also, I have a very exciting giveaway to tell you about midway through the show. So you've absolutely got to listen carefully so you do not miss out. All right, folks, let's get into it.

• 2:12Abbey Sharp?

  Well, thank you, EJ, so much for joining me. This is unfortunately a topic that I have kind of become a bit of an expert in unfortunately, because I see it as kind of like one of the most dangerous, if not, you know, the most dangerous wellness trends circulating right now. So, thank you so much for doing the hard work with that exposé for the cut. So amazing.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me and for your nice words.

• 2:38Abbey Sharp?

  Of course, yeah. So, okay, first of all, can you just kind of set the stage for us? And just kind of describe what is, or I guess like what was, the Skinny Society?

• 2:50Speaker 00

  So, the Skinny Society was a subscription-only group that was run by Liv Schmidt. Liv Schmidt is a very popular skinny talk influencer. She initially got famous on TikTok, but she was banned from TikTok a little less than a year ago. So she gravitated over to Instagram and she started this subscription-only service where for about 20 bucks a month, you could get access to recipes, original fitness content, various infographics, weight loss infographics that she made. But the main draw was this group chat.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Basically, if you signed up for the Skinny Society, you were grouped into this group chat of about 200 members who would be DMing each other throughout the day to keep each other accountable for their weight loss goals.

• 3:47Abbey Sharp?

  And, you know, I've seen Liv speak to this often, that she's suggesting that she's not promoting eating disorders, you know, whether it's through the Skinny Society or just her content in general, which of course has become very popular. She claims that she's simply there to support one another, you know, to help hold people accountable for their weight loss goals. Were there any specific problematic posts or like specific tips that you saw in these DM chats between these Skinny Society members that really stood out to you? As evidence that that line had gotten crossed.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, there were a ton. And I should also preface this by saying that I unfortunately, you know, I struggled with an eating disorder in my youth and I spent a lot of time on ED Tumblr and Pro Anna.

• 4:35Abbey Sharp?

  Uh huh.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Tumblr, so I was very familiar with sort of the dog whistles that are associated with this community. And there were a lot of very similar ones, mantras, like nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and things, slogans and that vein. But also, quote unquote, tips and hacks to sort of suppress your hunger cues. One of them was to use mouth tape before you go to bed at night to avoid snacking. There was somebody else who I saw recommending prunes as a laxative after feeling heavy, I believe was the word that she used after having a big meal.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Ice water, filling up on ice water and tea and various fluids so you don't feel hungry throughout the day. Just basically walking an insane amount of steps, like 18,000 to 20,000 steps.

• 5:31Abbey Sharp?

  Hmm.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  On very low calorie diets. Basically, just anything that you could possibly do to avoid eating, these women were recommending to each other.

• 5:40Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, yes, and you know, my followers also know that I too struggled with an eating disorder in my youth. And yes, I am very, very familiar with all these tips, read them, heard them. This is, it's terrifying. This is, this is terrifying to hear. And, and when posts did get particularly problematic at any point, did you ever see members recommend to one another to like seek psychological help? Was there anyone saying, hey, this is going too far?

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Never, not once.

• 6:13Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, God.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Not once. Liv herself would occasionally, in fairness to her, on the group chat. She would sort of, because there's one main group chat where Liv posts a couple of times a day, where Liv posted a couple of times a day and then all these individual group chats that are basically unregulated. But she would go into the main group chat every once in a while and be like, "Listen, just a reminder that we're not posting extremely low calorie diets here. Don't recommend any dangerous eating advice. I am not an eating disorder counselor. Like if you have trouble with binge eating or you have an eating disorder, please seek professional help."

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Like she would sort of go through the motions of reiterating that type of language publicly. But on the individual group threads, the unregulated private group chats, I never, ever saw that. And they were very young women on these group chats. I was able to confirm that at least a dozen members of the Skinny Society were still in high school.

• 7:16Abbey Sharp?

  Wow.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  So I was constantly waiting for somebody to say, you know, "Hey, you look, you look like you've lost a lot of weight, like in a very short amount of time. Maybe, maybe you should, you know, slow down a little bit. Or, hey, you know, maybe you shouldn't use prunes as a laxative after you have a big meal." But no, I never saw any of that.

• 7:40Abbey Sharp?

  Oh.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  It was just constantly reinforcing.

• 7:42Abbey Sharp?

  Wow, yeah. And, and like you said, I mean, clearly, I did read that Liv had a quote unquote "rule" in the Skinny Society that you had to be 18 or older. But obviously, this was not being reinforced. And I just feel that this like underage access to content like this is just generally a big, big issue because, you know, most social media platforms require users to be at least 13 years old, which in my opinion is still way too young to be exposed to content like this. But even still, there's no reliable mechanisms to verify or enforce these rules. So people lie about their age. And, and there could be, like, the platforms could do more. Because when you think about something like OnlyFans, for example,

• 8:25Abbey Sharp?

  like they require government ID or in a live selfie or video to match the ID. So I don't see why this couldn't be standard practice for all other social media accounts. And so, yeah, as a parent myself, this is something I'm very passionate about. It's terrifying. I think it really... Speaks to the importance of parents keeping close tabs on what your kids are doing online. And what's shocking to me to hear from you is that, you know, knowing that moms are a huge part of skinny talk. There's a huge mom base of skinny talk. It's shocking that there was no mom in that group to see a 13 year old girl, 14 year old girl or high school student

• 9:09Abbey Sharp?

  making some of these, you know, suggesting some of these dangerous diet tips and nobody stepped in to help that child.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, I'm a mom too, and that's how I felt every second I was going through these chats. I was like, I mean, I was sort of like quote unquote undercover, even though it's not really undercover. But I just, you know, I just wanted to be like, what are you doing? You know, that was just my impulse all the time as a parent is to just be protective. You don't need to do this. You look great. Stop. But no, nobody, nobody, I never saw any evidence of that. And the thing that was really frightening to me is this is sort of like getting in the weeds of like fat checking and reporting. But when I said I was able to confirm that there were more than a dozen

• 10:01Speaker 00

  members of the skinny society still in high school. These were only women, young women who use their full names on their profile. So I was able to cross check against their other social media profiles to confirm that they were in fact underage. And in a lot of cases, they were young women who put their like class affiliation on in their bios. But that is not counting what I imagine to be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other anonymous accounts that did not have any of that information. That would have been impossible for me to verify. Like, these were, these were the obvious cases, but I shudder to think of how many young women were using anonymous accounts in those groups

• 10:46Speaker 00

  that I was not able to verify their ages.

• 10:48Abbey Sharp?

  Right. And, okay, so speaking of obvious lack of support here. You noted that a lot of these chat rooms were far less about like positive accountability and more just like fierce female competition where like women were trying to like out restrict or like out punish one another. And anyone who's been on like, you know, 2000s Pro Anna Tumblr forums know that this is like textbook eating disorder rivalry, right? Like, so I'm wondering if you can give us any examples of the type of like competitive interactions that you saw between members when it came to, you know, their diets or their progress?

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that though, because and I would say this was the case on ED Twitter and Pro Anna Tumblr, you know, when I was on it way back when as well. It is competition, but it's sort of masquerading as solidarity. The environment there is extremely supportive. Nobody is outright saying you need to be eating fewer calories. Nobody is outright saying you need to be losing more weight. Everybody is extremely positive and extremely supportive to each other. And it's, it's very seductive because it sort of gives this vibe of this being a real support group and a real support system and a community for these women.

• 12:03Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  And actually, when it got shut down, that was what a lot of them complained about. Like, I lost my support system. I lost my community. But in reality, it's this toxic positivity is mascara is, is sort of hiding this very insidious competitive edge where women are constantly posting increasingly low calorie diets, daily diets, increasing step counts. Somebody would post, I walked 15,000 steps today. Another person would post, I walked 20,000 steps. Oh, really? Well, I, I post, I walked 30,000 steps and they would be applauded for it.

• 12:40Abbey Sharp?

  Wow.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  And these are women who were already, you know, doing workouts, leading active lifestyles and were eating maybe 1100, 1200 calories a day, like. These were not women who were eating like 5,000 calories a day or something where it would be, you know, relatively normal to to walk a lot of steps.

• 13:00Abbey Sharp?

  Of course.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  But it and just the constant effect of seeing that over and over and over again. It's not explicit, it's implicit, but it does foster this intensely competitive environment. And I felt it myself. I mean, everything I put in my mouth during the day or every, you know, every time I checked my step counter, I would think about that threat and I would I would think about whether or not the skinny society would approve.

• 13:28Abbey Sharp?

  Wow.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  It was it was sort of like a subconscious thing because I I could maintain like a distance from it. And I and I knew that objectively it was an incredibly toxic environment. But the fact that I am 35 years old and that got into my head to the extent that it did, it really frightened me to think about so many young women in there who have less life life experience, more vulnerability, internalizing that messaging.

• 13:56Abbey Sharp?

  Absolutely. I mean, comparison is often at the core of a lot of eating disorders, which obviously can become so competitive. And, you know, eating disorders are often very egosyntonic. So they become a hallmark of our identity. So in this context, you know, being more quote unquote successful at the disorder is seen as like an accomplishment for, you know, when we are looking at these like pro ANA kind of a forum. So like getting hospitalized or reaching a specific low weight. And then in this kind of like more gray areas, like reaching the 30,000 steps or like eating, you know, getting making a 700, you know, calorie deficit or whatever. So these online communities that celebrate quote unquote progress

• 14:41Abbey Sharp?

  and quote unquote success at restricting or doing 30,000 steps a day, they reinforce in a lot of ways that like sicker is better.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:50Abbey Sharp?

  Even though they don't necessarily like see it as sicker because this is such an echo chamber for we're doing what's healthy. And, you know, I'll talk about that more in a moment. All right, folks, as promised, huge giveaway here. Bite Back is giving away $500 gift cards to Shopper's Drug Mart. Each week, I give you a different keyword. And this week's keyword is lemon. So text LEMON plus your name to 925555 to enter for your chance to win. Again, text LEMON, that's L-E-M-O-N, plus your name to 925555 for your chance to win a $500 gift card to Shopper's Drug Mart. Standard data and message rates apply.

• 15:34Abbey Sharp?

  See contest rules linked in the description of this episode for details. All right, back to skinny talk.

• 15:54Abbey Sharp?

  You know, I know that this must have been very hard for you, who, you know, you're coming into this with a history of disordered eating. And like, like, how quick was it to trigger that, like, you know, to kind of go back? Because we know, you know, it's, we, folks who have struggled with an eating disorder, like, we kind of have to guard ourselves. And we're always on guard for, like, those triggers that could take us back to that dark place. How quickly did this happen?

• 16:20Speaker 00

  I'm laughing because it was immediate. Yeah. It was less than a day.

• 16:23Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  And I have been in therapy for a very long time. Like, I was fairly certain that I could bolster myself against just this constant onslaught of messaging, but I couldn't.

• 16:33Abbey Sharp?

  Yeah.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  And, and I think that's by design. The fact that every five minutes, I would get a new message, a new notification, somebody posting a new low-calorie diet, somebody posting a new body transformation photo where they'd lost an extreme amount of weight in a very short amount of time, somebody posting a win that they'd dropped, like, three dress sizes in a month. It was just constant and constantly affirming my worst possible basic, basest impulses that...

• 17:08Speaker 00

  In retrospect, it's not surprising to me at all that that happened. And I probably should have sought more extensive therapy before I began reporting this story.

• 17:18Abbey Sharp?

  Well, I hope that you can, you know, get the care that you need now in the aftermath. It's very hard and I think it really speaks to why places like this are so dangerous, you know, for women because over a third of quote, quote, I guess, normal dieters, people who can just pick up a diet and try to lose a couple of pounds, will progress to pathological dieters. And then about a quarter of those people will develop a partial or full-blown ED. So chances are that there are a lot of folks in those groups who already are at huge risk of an eating disorder or eating disorder relapse if they're not already kind of like actively struggling in it. And it just feeds one another.

• 18:00Abbey Sharp?

  If you're not struggling going in, when everyone around you has that mentality, it's so hard to escape and not see it as completely normalized, celebrated, just status quo the way it is.

• 18:13Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 18:14Abbey Sharp?

  Now, I want to talk about kind of like the broader culture of skinny talk because in your piece, you wrote, "In Schmidt's world, thinness isn't just a physical state, but the basis of an entire luxury lifestyle." Can you just kind of give us some examples of what you meant, you know, of that from what you saw?

• 18:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's very canny about self-branding. She's an extremely savvy self-brander. She knows how she looks. She's a very tall, thin, willowy, conventionally attractive blonde woman. She's a model, she's a working model. She lives in New York City. You know, she has a very aspirational career to a lot of young women, a very aspirational lifestyle. She's constantly posting photos of herself, sort of adopting the hallmarks of that lifestyle. She'll be going to Pilates class, like wearing very expensive athleisure, sipping on a green juice. Or she'll be standing in the middle of SoHo and a Rolls Royce will like pull over and try to get her number.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  She is very good at posting a very specific type of lifestyle that women, young women of a certain age would aspire toward. And she's also constantly posting images of not only herself, but stock images of sleek models enjoying a cappuccino in a piazza in Italy, wearing big sunglasses or fanning out on the deck of a billionaire's yacht with all of these slogans that are promoting feeling lightness. That's how she puts it, feeling light, feeling sleek. Even if she's not saying thin, she's sort of dancing around it and alluding to it.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  So the combination of that visual iconography, which again, I was pretty familiar with from ED Tumblr. Nothing that she does is particularly like new or inventive. But the combination of that visual iconography with her messaging is extremely seductive to young women.

• 20:20Abbey Sharp?

  Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if we just think about the past century plus, thinness has been used as like a signal of wealth and privilege. Like you can afford to, you know, buy the low calorie $18 Air One smoothie and take the boutique Pilates classes and go to cryotherapy and have the luxury time to walk for like three hours a day to get those 30,000 steps a day. You can afford to restrict and not because of scarcity, but because of choice and control, which are obviously, you know, very clear upper class values. So yeah, in this context, thinness kind of becomes a form of like social capital and it just perpetuates this illusion that being thin unlocks this hugely better,

• 21:04Abbey Sharp?

  more successful, more desirable, more aesthetic life. So you're right, her branding is on point. She knows her audience, she knows what's going to kind of rope people in.

• 21:15Abbey Sharp?

  And it is so seductive.

• 21:30Abbey Sharp?

  Another theme that you talk about that really riles me up about skinny talk in general is that it seems to kind of mask its harmful messages in the language of empowerment and self-care and feminism and investing in yourself. And in your article, you quoted another skinny talk influencer, Amanda Dobler, who said that skinny talk isn't about promoting eating disorders, but about showing women they are allowed to want more for themselves. I have thoughts, but from your perspective, like, why is seeing skinny talk as self-care so problematic?

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this as well. I was actually saying on another podcast, like, if I were to sort of, this is so pretentious, but like, pick a unifying theme of like, the stories that I'm drawn to or the types of pieces that I write, it's organizations that use the language of female empowerment to further restrict women and to further subjugate women.

• 22:31Abbey Sharp?

  Yep.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  The thing that I kept thinking about and reporting on this story was the NXIVM trial. NXIVM was this, it was known in the media as the sex cult, but that was sort of an inaccurate characterization of it. It was, that only like, referred to like, a very small sliver of the organization. For the most part, it was an empowerment, you know, a self-empowerment wellness organization. And it primarily attracted very successful upper-middle-class women who were drawn to the language of empowerment, of being a badass bitch, of, you know, taking your fate in your own hands. And the leader of that cult,

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Keith Raniere, some of the things that he suggested in order for women to achieve that sense of empowerment was to have sex with him, to, again, with thinness, you know, restrict their diets to very low-calorie diets, constantly exercise, brand themselves with his initials. So I found it fascinating that this guy was able To so successfully sell female empowerment to an audience of very intelligent, very well-equipped socially women, but package it and also suggest, well, you should brand yourself with my initials, you know, well, well, you should starve yourself.

• 23:49Abbey Sharp?

  Yep.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  And I think it's a very similar dynamic going on here. I think that people like Liv, influencers like Liv have figured out that this language of self-empowerment is very attractive to women who might feel burnt out on mainstream feminism and the body positivity movement and this girl bossy idea that like women can have it all. I think that a lot of women are burnt out on it. I think justifiably so. And I think that women like Liv are sort of moving into the vacuum left by women's frustration with mainstream feminism and saying, no, that's,

• 24:31Speaker 00

  that's not, that's not how you achieve self-fulfillment. That's not how you achieve empowerment. It's actually by starving yourself.

• 24:39Abbey Sharp?

  Starving yourself. Yeah, no, I agree. And I actually, I have an episode with one of the ex-cult members of NXIVM here on the channel where we did talk in more detail about those, the restrictive. And this article actually that you published, you kind of refer to this as the cult of skinniness. So there are so many intersections here. And I think that's a really fascinating parallel. But also, yeah, like this, this constant narrative, oh, this is about self-care, it's about showing up for yourself, it's about investing yourself. It really weaponizes the language of mental health and it really blurs this line between, you know, actual self-care, which includes fueling your body and aesthetics, and it turns

• 25:24Abbey Sharp?

  kind of punishment into this like twisted, you know, empowerment and path, like pathologizes rest, pathologizes fullness. Like, these are kind of important things for, you know, not just women, but for everyone. And it just reinforces all these toxic values under this guise of, of personal growth, which really is no different than, than. Nexium or really any other popular cult. And it's not just about personal growth, but also health, right? Because I was on Liv Schmidt's IG the other day and I noticed that she had posted the Obesity Action Coalition as her new charitable partner in her bio. And not only does this like scream virtue signaling to me,

• 26:03Abbey Sharp?

  but it also makes it seem like her mission here is to help people who are obese get healthy. But like, her content is never even directed at people who need to like lose 150 pounds to reduce their diabetes medication or improve their mobility or whatever. It's directed at already thin, young women who want to get more thin or stay thin. So again, like, like you mentioned, folks may come to her page and see this and think, oh, wow, yeah, like obesity, it's such a big problem. I'm so glad she's, you know, fighting the good fight and promoting people get healthy. But it's not about health, right? This was never about health. And I think that you, you really do a fantastic job at highlighting that in your piece. So, yeah, I don't think the sag is over.

• 26:48Abbey Sharp?

  I don't know what, what you're kind of digging up now, but I don't think the sag is over. So I do hope you can continue to bring to light the damages that this trend has done as it evolves. So, yeah, it's scary.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  It is. It's, it's really scary. It's made me very frightened for the future of young women.

• 27:04Abbey Sharp?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, me as well. It seems to just be getting worse and worse and worse. And, you know, especially with AI and just the proliferation of misinformation and dangerous, you know, content online. It's, it's a very scary time to have, to be a mom and to be, you know, thinking about our kids being on social media, but, you know, also for ourselves, like adults who have incredible, critical things to say, like you mentioned, even with the Nexium cult, like, these were, these were educated people. These were successful people and they still get drawn in to these incredibly problematic communities. So, thank you again, EJ, for chatting and fighting the good fight. I'm definitely going to be leaving a link to the full article in the show notes.

• 27:48Abbey Sharp?

  So, thank you again for joining us.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 27:56Abbey Sharp?

  Such a fascinating, but also pretty terrifying story. But ultimately, a very good reminder of why we need to be so vigilant about what we come across online, because ultimately, the protections that we have in these spaces is just so subpar. Since EJ's article was first published, MENA did end up putting an age limit on the group, which, as we established, isn't necessarily that helpful if people are lying about their age to get on the app in the first place. But they also barred LIZ from the subscription monetization tool. And then over on TikTok, we just saw them finally ban the word skinnytalk,

• 28:37Abbey Sharp?

  following heavy scrutiny from digital watchdogs in France and the EU. So basically, if you now search for the hashtag skinnytalk, you are taken to eating disorder and mental health resources. So I see this as a huge, huge win. But unfortunately, this is not going to be enough. On YouTube, LIZ's channel has amassed almost 100,000 subscribers, posting videos with titles like "Understand This and You'll Be Skinny", "The No Fail Way to Be Skinny", and "How to Create a Skinny Body on a Budget". Over on Instagram, you can still search the hashtag skinnytalk and find plenty of problematic

• 29:20Abbey Sharp?

  tips. And even though LIZ can't make money off her community on IG, she does have a link in bio for a July 1st entry application to her SkinnySociety. So I'm assuming she's just going to take her MonetizeProED forum somewhere else. As a dietitian who speaks out against these harmful trends on the regular, I believe there needs to be far better protections in place beyond just flagging specific hashtags, because these creators will just come up with another code word that their followers understand, no different than celebrities calling drones "Dior bags".

• 30:01Abbey Sharp?

  With all the advances in AI, we should be seeing platforms take greater initiatives to train AI models specifically on pro and a language and restrictive content. And they need to find a way to differentiate content promoting disordered eating versus content from professionals like myself who are speaking out against it. And if that is so difficult, then they could easily use AI to identify science communicators and healthcare professionals and amplify our voices in the algorithm while throttling the visibility of content that normalizes harmful body standards, extreme diets, and body checking.

• 30:44Abbey Sharp?

  But these platforms are not going to make a change unless we ask for it. So I urge you to visit the platform's support portals to submit recommendations for improvements and advocate for them to take greater accountability for the content that they spread afar. So I will be leaving links in the show notes for where you can submit your recommendations and requests so we can all hopefully build a better, safer online community for generations to come. And on that note, that is all that I have for you guys today. Thank you again to EJ Dixon for helping me fight back against diet culture. And a reminder that the Shoppers Drug Mart contest is three weeks long for up to three entries to win a $500 gift card to Shoppers Drug Mart.

• 31:27Abbey Sharp?

  So there will be another keyword in next week's episode for you to listen for. Signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.