How online activists helped close BOO, an MLM scheme that sold $110 bags of dirt as alternative medicine on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok during the pandemic
until scrutiny closed in last week. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Laurie Garrett / @laurie_garrett : Eating #ivermectin horse worms paste was bad enough, but now #antivaxxers are — and this is true — eating handfuls of “magic dirt” to Ward off #COVID19 . The #vaccines are free and effective. The dirt costs $110/bag. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Jo Ling Kent / @jolingkent : “Put more simply, the product is dirt — four-and-a-half ounces of it, sealed in a sleek black plastic baggie and sold for $110 plus shipping.” Another must read piece from our @BrandyZadrozny: https://twitter.com/... Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : This story was such a throwback to the old internet beat, before the worst of online shaped mainstream culture and politics. It was fun then, diving down rabbit holes, profiling subcultures & talking to smart people about the dumb things we do online. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Laura J. Nelson / @laura_nelson : This is a wild read: https://www.nbcnews.com/... Subrahmanyam Kvj / @sub8u : This is one of the weirdest stories out there. In the pandemic-driven world of online misinformation, an alternative medicine started doing quite well. It was dirt. Literal dirt. Sold for $110+. The story only gets more weird from there😂 https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : Good morning and welcome to what has been a real-life obsession for me for the past 3 months: The Magic Dirt MLM and the mudslinger who rallied new covid deniers and anti-vaxxers to buy in. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
BOO's closure is the latest chapter in a pattern where social platforms host health-adjacent sales schemes until outside pressure forces cleanup. In 2018, Instagram restricted opioid-related hashtags only after an activist confronted Facebook executives, following years of reports; in 2020, an investigation found illicit THC products openly hawked on Instagram and Facebook before groups and posts were removed.
The multilevel-marketing angle has its own arc: a growing online anti-MLM movement culminated in TikTok becoming the first major platform to explicitly ban multilevel marketing in late 2020. That BOO operated across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok anyway — and was closed by activists rather than the platforms themselves — shows the gap between platform policy and enforcement.
First-order effects
- BOO is shut down, cutting off its seller network's income channel and ending the sale of $110 four-and-a-half-ounce bags of dirt marketed as alternative medicine during the pandemic.
- Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok face renewed scrutiny that their commerce surfaces still carried the scheme despite TikTok's explicit MLM ban.
Second-order effects
- Other MLMs and unproven-health sellers operating on the same platforms become targets of the same activist playbook, which has already moved Instagram to restrict hashtags once before.
- Platforms are pushed toward preemptive removals of MLM and alternative-medicine content to avoid repeating the reactive cycle that preceded the THC and opioid cleanups.
Third-order effects
- Enforcement of dubious commerce on social platforms is consolidating around coordinated activist campaigns plus reporter scrutiny as the de facto regulator, with platform policy changes like TikTok's MLM ban following pressure rather than preceding it.
- If the pattern holds, direct-to-consumer health products sold through social channels will increasingly be gated by platform trust-and-safety rules shaped by public campaigns, not by product-safety regulation.
The trend: Social-platform commerce is being policed less by regulators than by coordinated online activist movements whose campaigns force platform policy changes after schemes have already scaled.