Bloomberg – Big Take: How Zyn Nicotine Pouches Made It Big Jan 24, 2025 Zyn nicotine pouches hit the market as a run-of-the-mill tobacco-replacement product, but over the past few years, they’ve gone viral thanks to so-called “Zynfluencers”: content creators who post about Zyn. They’re not paid by Zyn’s parent company Philip Morris, and while the online hype has likely helped sales, it also presents risks for the tobacco giant. Today on the show, Bloomberg Businessweek writer Ellen Huet joins host Sarah Holder to discuss what could become an existential question: Can the company ride the Zynfluencer wave without getting in trouble if kids get hooked?
In this podcast they mention how these influencers are helping to do “free” advertising for Phillip Morris by hyping this nicotine product. But I think the fact that it’s in the right-wing mediasphere and MTG is talking about a “Zynsurrection” and whatnot, makes it clear that it’s all fueled up by the same apparatus that is indirectly funding all these people in the information gig economy. All someone with various investments has to do is contribute to some PR operation that goes out with their botnets and sock puppets hitting like and doing paid subscriptions on all these things from content creators, even small-time content creators. There are potentially many layers between who’s funding and the advertisements, that these influencers don’t have the conflicts to report, because they don’t even know who or why is hitting like and subscribe, and driving most of their traffic. They have complete deniability about their audience capture in chasing clicks.