You’ve just signed a promising creator. Their engagement is solid. Their content looks clean. The vibes are on point. But here’s the terrifying truth: you may have just handed your brand over to a PR time bomb.
The creator economy isn’t slowing down — and neither are the risks. While traditional brand safety focused on ad placement, today’s challenges are personal, behavioral, and real-time. The stakes are higher, the backlash is faster, and the old tools simply don’t cut it.
In today’s culture-driven, always-online world, a single misstep can take your brand from beloved to blacklisted — overnight. And in 2025, the #1 mistake brands keep making isn’t about bad products or poor service.
Brand safety sounds clinical. Like a line item. A checklist. A filter you apply before launch.
You’d think telling someone they just scored a free trip to Tulum or a six-figure collab would be the most dramatic part of influencer marketing. It’s not.
When Influence Becomes Liability
Social media is shifting again. Meta’s Threads has crossed 150 million users. Bluesky is building momentum with a decentralized vision. Even apps like Mastodon and Nostr are finding their niche audiences.
The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter
In April 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that could ban TikTok if its parent company, ByteDance, fails to divest. With the Senate expected to follow, and the White House already signaling support, this isn’t just noise.
Shein, one of the biggest names in Gen Z retail, had partnered with creators who failed to clearly disclose sponsored relationships. And because those disclosures were unclear, inconsistent, or buried, the FTC determined that the brand itself bore responsibility.
We’re excited to announce the launch of Web Search — a powerful new feature that brings real-time internet coverage directly into every new creator scan on the VwD platform.
It started with a tweet. The creator wasn’t new. In fact, the brand had worked with her on two successful campaigns before. Her aesthetic matched perfectly, her engagement was stellar, and her audience adored her. But one late-night tweet — a tasteless joke, resurfaced from 2016 — changed everything.
