Social media videos of elderly people manipulated to sell 'handmade' items
- Published on September 15, 2025 at 22:34
- Updated on September 15, 2025 at 22:46
- 8 min read
- By Cintia NABI CABRAL, AFP France
- Translation and adaptation Mia DOUGLAS , AFP USA
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The viral posts have a common structure: they show an elderly person or a family member saddened by a business failure. A typical caption starts: "POV: You stayed 9 seconds so my grandpa doesn't have to shutdown his farm."
Many feature an older woman in bright yellow glasses imploring people to share the post.
After a sequence featuring the supposedly handmade product, the viewer is encouraged to make a purchase.
Videos with similar messages can be found on Facebook and Instagram and in various languages, including French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.
However, the videos have been manipulated. The accounts that spread them take content from other social media users and repackage it to create a false, emotionally manipulative narrative with the aim to sell products.
Fraudsters have always used the technique of emotional manipulation, said Jérôme Notin, executive director of the French government's anti-cybercrime platform.
Today, scams are adapting to social media to attract people of all ages, he told AFP on August 22, 2025.
Stolen videos
A reverse image search showed videos that use similar sequences to promote multiple products.
Further image and keyword searches, led AFP to one of the women who appears in the videos -- an American content creator on TikTok (@buzziebeeteacher0) named Barbara Kingsley.
The retired teacher denied having made the videos to sell products. "I don't sell anything, I never have and I never will," she told AFP on August 27, 2025.
"I am here for my country, I am not here to make money," she added, referring to the misused clip in which she discusses democracy (archived here).
Another shared post featuring Kingsley shows an elderly man in a sewing workshop. A reverse image search found a March 2025 post on the Instagram (archived here) account of British tailoring company, WeaverDee, with the following message: "Share! We've seen several fake accounts popping up stealing Noel's videos as bait to get people to buy from their businesses."
AFP contacted Noel Jaycott, who is listed on the website as the company's co-founder, and he denied involvement in the viral videos. "We are aware of the problem and are trying to remove the videos, but they keep appearing," he said on August 25.
There are other manipulated videos, such as one that repurposed content from a creator who posts about her grandmother. A reverse image search revealed the original video posted on August 6, 2023 on TikTok (archived here). The video shows the woman crying because she does not want her granddaughter to leave her side. At no point is the sale of any product mentioned.
"Dropshipping"
Many of the accounts with fake videos included links in their bios that led to pages selling slippers or other products, such as "Birkitas" or "Love Keychains."
Except for a generic contact email address, these platforms do not display any information about the ownership or location of the companies. Both were created in 2025, as AFP verified by entering their domains into the tool Whois, which provides more details about websites.
Despite presenting the products as handmade, similar items can be found at lower prices on online sales platforms such as AliExpress, Temu, or Shein (archived here, here and here).
These characteristics coincide with those of "dropshipping," a business model in which the person promoting and selling products acts as an intermediary between buyer and seller. In this model, the shipping of the items is delegated to the supplier, who is usually located in countries with low production costs.
Asked by AFP on August 25 about its policy to combat online scams, TikTok said that it moderates "content relating to products or activities that may be risky, addictive, dangerous, fraudulent, or require extreme caution" (archived here).
"As stated in our Community Guidelines, we do not allow attempts to defraud or scam members of our community. Users who commit repeated violations may have their accounts banned" (archived here).
Read more of AFP's reporting on online scams here.
The link in the final paragraph was updated.September 15, 2025 The link in the final paragraph was updated.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
