Manus Hid Paid Creator Ties in Get-Rich-Quick AI Ads
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- Manus ran ads on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok — including from an account called "Manus AI by Meta" — promoting its AI agent as an "easy side hustle" that "absolutely anybody can do," allegedly earning "$5k a month" in "less than 10 minutes"
- Manus paid a network of content creators, most in their late teens or early 20s, to post near-identical content hyping the website scheme; many accounts were only a few months old and failed to disclose the paid relationship in their bios or posts
- Manus spokesperson Ronghui Li confirmed the company "works with third-party agency partners on paid UGC creator programs" but said disclosure on individual creator posts is the creators' responsibility, and that Manus is now reviewing flagged accounts
- Legal experts including advertising lawyer Sonal Patel Oliva of Fieldfisher and University of Essex law professor Alexandros Antoniou said the undisclosed relationships likely violate platform policies and advertising laws in the UK, EU, and US, and that vague bios like "building with Manus" "won't cut it" as disclosure
- TikTok took down most of the Manus hype videos and banned many of the accounts after The Verge reached out for comment; Meta and YouTube did not respond to multiple requests for comment
- Chinese regulators have blocked Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus, and Meta may now have to unwind the deal even as Manus says it "expects to reach a resolution with Beijing"
Why it matters: Meta's $2 billion Manus acquisition is already blocked by Chinese regulators, and now the AI subsidiary's undisclosed paid-promotion program may have run afoul of advertising laws in the UK, EU, and US. The episode puts Meta on the hook for its subsidiary's compliance failures at a moment when it's trying to defend the cross-border deal in Beijing.
