We have an exciting opportunity, especially for you, if we could just have five minutes of your time you could stand to make R3 million a year.

Of course, we have no such offer, but the line above might seem familiar if you’ve dealt with multi-level marketing recruiters. While we could say anything we want on this website, had we placed that phrase on TikTok, we’d find our content removed.

This is because of a small but important update to TikTok’s Community Guidelines that were published this week. Those guidelines explicitly ban Ponzi, multi-level marketing (MLM) and pyramid schemes from the platform.

“We do not permit anyone to exploit our platform to take advantage of the trust of users and bring about financial or personal harm,” reads the updated section. “We remove content that deceives people in order to gain an unlawful financial or personal advantage, including schemes to defraud individuals or steal assets”.

This is followed by a list of content relating to fraud and scams that users are not allowed to post including:

• Content that depicts or promotes phishing
• Content that depicts or promotes Ponzi, multi-level marketing, or pyramid schemes
• Content that depicts or promotes investment schemes with promise of high returns, fixed betting, or any other types of scams

Singling out multi-level marketing is a bold move especially as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube allow those involved in the sector to post and recruit new people. Unfortunately multi-level marketers can employ some truly horrible techniques in a bid to recruit people, often tugging on the emotions of potential recruits.

As with our promise above, multi-level marketing firms often present themselves as easy ways to start your own business but the reality is that this is not the case. In 2018 the AARP Foundation found that of 20 million Americans participating in these sorts of businesses, 47 percent lost money and 27 percent made no money at all. Of those that do make money 53 percent made less than $5 000.

We would love to see other social networks follow TikTok’s lead though, even if it does mean those users might to leave the platform in response.

Remember folks, aside from hard work and picking 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 in the Lotto, there isn’t a way to get rich quickly.