There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative. I'm Bridget Tod and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Ten people died, including three children, and hundreds more were injured at rapper Travis Scott's Astro World music festival in Houston, Texas.
Firsthand video footage on social media shows young people pleading with crew members to stop the performance because people in the crowd were unresponsive, but authorities say Travis Scott continued to perform for thirty seven minutes after Houston police and firefighters were called to what had been deemed a mass casualty event. Travis Scott even brought out rapper Drake for a guest appearance as many in the crowd screamed for help.
It's not clear if Travis Scott knew the severity of the situation, but Scott does have a history of inciting crowds into dangerous behavior at his concerts. He's even faced charges for it at past concerts and Live Nation, the company behind Astro World has a long history of safety violations. As the footage coming out of the event is horrifying, and because of Travis Scott's fan base. This was happening
to very young people, kids. I was getting winded, I was using all the energy I had left in me, and I came to the point where I was accepting my dead. In a statement, Travis Scott says he didn't know people had died until after he left the stage.
He also announced what he called a partnership with the therapy app Better Help to provide a free month of therapy to those impacted by the tragedy, which on space may sound great, but Better Help has also been called out for its murky policies regarding how they used the data of clients and how they treat mental health services
in general. Not to be clear, I am not an expert on digital health services, but Dr Michael Amato, our show's producer and chief science officer, is Michael was a psychologist who does research on digital health interventions and he leads the data team that supports digital products, which is
hundreds of thousands of people overcome addiction. Mike, can I sit down with Jeff Gunther, a therapist who runs therapy then a resource to match people with diverse therapists, who uses this platform on TikTok to warn people that apps like better Help might not be as good as they seem. I am Jeff gunther licensed professional counselor. So, Jeff, you run a resource called the Therapy Den. How did this resource come to be? Yeah, so I'm in a therapist
or practice in therapists. Two thousand five, I started a local therapist directory in Portland's that's where I live. And the Portland Therapist directory grew and I learned um about what therapists are wanting, on what clients are wanting when they're looking for a therapist. Then back like three or four years ago, I used all that knowledge to launch therapy den dot com and it was sort of like meant to counter another huge therapist directory, Psychology Today. Psychology Today.
You might be aware of their magazine. You'll find Psychology todayse magazines like in all of the therapist waiting rooms. One of the things I don't like about their magazine is that, basically, over the like many many decades that they've been producing their magazine, they primarily only have very good looking people on the cover, very skinny women, um that are predominantly white. So um, there's no diversity on their magazine cover, and that transfers over to their therapist directory,
which is sort of like always rankings number one on Google. Uh. So they you can't go to psychology today and find a therapist that is competently trained in racial justice or and that is competently trained in treating transgender people or UM. For the longest time, you can search therapists by gender, and they only had male and female gender. So there was like I made therapy dender the Therapy then directory to kind of like challenge them and force them or
encourage them to evolve. And psychology today has been slowly kind of evolving. UM. I don't think that they totally meet the needs of modern clients, but they're doing something about it, and I'm happy about that. So Therapy then was sort of like, all right, I'm gonna like try to create this disruptive force in the therapist directory uh field, which like isn't very big um. And so that was the main agenda and then we can get into it.
But like back in two thousand and fifteen, when like better Help and talk space started to become a thing, I was like, oh, okay, like there's somebody I need to target as well. I know when I was first looking for a therapist. A few years ago. I knew that I wanted a black woman, and that's partially because I had heard from my black girlfriends of these awful experiences of having to spend their time in therapy, you know, educating their white rapiste about things like systemic racism. And
I knew that I didn't want to do that. But finding a black woman therapist for me was incredibly difficult. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Yeah, exactly. That isn't how therapy should be. Like you should not be spending time that you're paying for to educate your client or educate your therapist on who you are, your culture, your background, the language that you use, where you're coming from.
You know, your your religion, your ethnicity. So that's why therapy then was created so that we can like create like a ton of filters so that you can like figure out how you can find a therapist that already matches with you and in lots of different ways. Um. And also I've like taken a stance on like here are a ton of different questions that clients should be
asking their therapist in the first session. If you're if you're black, and you're seeing a therapist that's white, you need to ask that that therapist like what makes you How can you competently treat me? What do you know
about my ethnicity? How do you feel when if I'm going to talk about how racist white people are, Like what do you think about you know, the black lives matters, and like all the protests and like there's just like hundreds of like questions that you could ask your therapist to make sure that they are a good fit for you.
And I don't think that a lot of clients know that they can like interview their therapist on that first session and ask that therapists tell me, like the specific training that you've received, talk talk to me about like the supervisors and the consultation groups that you're in. So I know that, so that I know that you can competently treat me. So that's a whole thing. Yeah. I love that you're giving clients and just people the like empowering them with a language and tools to to advocate
for themselves. I love that. So you talked about your relationship with these therapy apps that have really become ubiquitous in the last few years, things like better Help and Talk space. You know, when I first heard about these apps, they did really seem like an accessible way for folks to access my therapists. But so many therapists I've heard from do not like these apps. Can you tell me
why that is? Yeah, but let's start there. Like, you're right, the accessibility that these apps have like tapped into it is so incredibly difficult, and I wish it wasn't. It's a systemic issue. But it's so incredibly difficult for somebody to just like find a therapist it's a good match for them. Um, There's a ton of searching that you have to do. There's confusing insurance that you have to like wade through. Um, it can be expensive. There's like
a ton of roadblocks. So many therapists are booked, especially because everybody in the world decided to get therapy at the saying goddamn time, which is totally fine. I get it, I understand. I love that you're getting therapy. Um, but therapists are so busy, so you're just like you. Even if you find a therapist who is a good match, it's incredibly frustrating because they might not have any openings.
But then better how talk space cerebral other apps like that have come along, and they're just say, hey, click a button. We are the uber of therapy. Download app, click this button, check the terms of service, don't worry about reading and it's confusing anyways, and we will set you up with a therapist. Just and the therapist. Is it gonna Is that a good match? I don't know.
We hope so maybe. Uh. But like they've tapped into the accessibility of part where it's just like it it's so understandable, like people are getting so frustrated, so of course they're going to go to these apps, especially like in younger people that are used to doing that. Yeah, that is an excellent point that they really did identify a true need that exists out there. Of it's difficult
to find a therapist. And we talk a lot on this show about bad things that the internet and tech bring to us, but I'm talking to Bridget the other day. One of the things you mentioned was how her favorite stories are about the great things that the internet does to like bring the people together or help somebody be seen or find whatever it is that they're looking for. And it really seems like they sort of zeroed in on that and it is a real need that they've addressed.
It is. It's a real need. And on the platforms there are actually amazing therapists, Like my beef is not with the therapists that are contracted to provide therapy. Uh there they are like trained at um you know, and licensed and they're they're great. Uh So, yeah, they tap into a need and somebody needed to do it. And it's because like because therapists and private practice cannot all get their ship together. We're all running our own little
individual small businesses. Um, so we can't all come together and like figure out how to solve this problem. And it's not just therapistic being to come together. It's just like so many layers of everything that needs to come together in order to fix this. So these tech companies, which are super savvy, they're the ones that did it. So bravo, I hate you. You compared these apps to Uber and you know, it's one of those things like should getting a therapist, should starting the journey to like
deal with your trauma, unpack your issues? Should that look like an Uber business model that we know has so much exploitation, whether it's the exploitation of drivers, the exploitation of writer writer details and writer privacy. Should should that relationship mimic uber and I would argue, no, it shouldn't.
That accessibility is good. The idea of having a therapist at your fingertips sounds great, but when you actually think about it harder, you're like, wait, should therapy be the same be a similar kind of business framework as something like an uber where you can get a ride at the push of a button. And maybe this driver isn't being treated well and maybe they aren't being super careful with my data. Who knows, I don't know. The answers might be buried in the third page of some you know,
murky privacy documents somewhere, Like I'm not really sure. Should getting into a relationship with a therapist really be the same way that it is when you just like hail a taxi to your home? Yeah? I mean no, I think not at all. And because like you know, if someone's deriving you from the restaurant to your home, like I don't know, I guess that person can kind of
be anybody as long as they're like good enough. You know, they're not going to bother you, They're gonna like be quiet whatever, they'll they'll do what they need to do to get you from like point A to point B. But when you're looking for a therapist, it's not just like are they good enough? Are they going to talk to your listen, it's like are they actually qualified to treat you? Do they understand your experience in a like
deep way? Um? And you need to shop around for therapists and talk to multiple therapists in order to find somebody who's a good enough match. Um And instead of just being handed one like Uber would do, or like talk space or better help does so. No, I don't think so, but there are um apps and um tech companies that like understand that better help is not doing
this well and somebody else needs to do it better. UM. So there is a like a newer app that's I think it's maybe just in like Florida or Georgia right now called Hurdle. Have you ever heard of Hurdle? Yeah, it's I just heard about it. And they contacted me to like let me know about what they're doing. UM And they contacted me because they're like, hey, can you sponsor us on TikTok? And they said, uh no, but only because it's sort of like conflicts with therapy then
where I'm trying to connect people. So it's anyways, I love them and what they're doing, what they started out doing where they're like paying therapists, Well we should talk about that with Better Help um, because they're not uh, and they're like making sure that all the therapists on the platform are competently trained in racial justice and social justice and their trans competent and queer competent and and they're continuously going through trainings um there and so like
they're doing it the right way. So there are apps and services out there that are starting to do it the right way. But Better Help and Talk Space they're like these first movers that have amazing marketing, especially Better Help uh and and yeah, so it might be hard to compete with them. It's it's interesting that you say that they have better marketing, you know, because I've looked at your TikTok's and I think one of the big criticisms is how they harvest people's data and use it
for marketing and advertising. And uh, you know, I clicked through I read their privacy form and yeah, they're just using all of your data, including your communications with your counselor for third party marketing, and so it made me wonder, like how much of their business model is actual therapy delivery and how much are they in advertising them exactly? Yes, they get so much amazing personal data on your mental health information, who you are, when was your you know,
are you suicidal? When was your last suicide attempt? How much money do you make? Uh? Where do you live? Um, what are your pronouns? What's your sexual orientation? Uh, what's your gender? Like there's They get the most detailed information about how much, how often you're talking to your therapist, if you're meeting your therapistical, if you're married, counseling goals,
like so much stuff, Um, incredibly valuable. I don't know like how much money they make off of it, or if they make any money off it, if they're making all of their money off of that, but they that
that information is incredibly valuable, and they did. Um, they were a little bit more clear a few months ago when I made one of my first TikTok videos about them and going through their privacy policy about like all information that they collect since I sort of like exposed them and it's got you know, over a million views of their privacy policy. And they've changed their privacy policy to make it so much more vague and so much more confusing and actually gives them so much more leeway
when it comes to like sharing your data. They can share your data with their corporate partners. Do you know who their corporate partners are? Fuck? No, who the funk knows? I have no idea. They don't list them. They can share it with their ad network. You know who's in their ad network? I have no fucking idea. Probably a ton of people. Um, they can. They can use it for marketing purposes and whatever the hell they want to use it for. Um. So we don't know why what
they're using for exactly. We don't know who they're sharing it with. We don't know how much money they're making off of it. And the only way that you can use their act is if you check off the terms of service, which like allows them to use all this information. Um, I would love it if they gave you an option to not like sell your data on my like HBO Max subscription. There's a little check box that says, are we allowed? Can we like use your third party data?
And can just be like Nope, better help doesn't do that, and why would they ever do it because they're probably
making a ton of money. Something else that I'd like to mention is that you know they're able to sell your information to third parties, and so if they sold your information to a company like Facebook, then you think about all the different data that we know that Facebook is able to collect, combined with whatever they have from your your relationship with your counselor through better health, it becomes clearer just like we're not talking about little bits
and pieces of data. They really can mine and harvest a real composite like portrait of who you are and sell that for profit. And I just I'm I just fundamentally believe that that is not how a relationship with a mental health specialist should look and and and to me, there is not another word for that other than like exploitation. And like I guess, I really see it as this kind of capitalistic mining of the most sensitive stuff about us so that corporate interests can get better pockets. And
it's just so depressing and demoralizing. God, it is, it really is. Let's take a quick break at our back. So you might be thinking, what about hippop the health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a law that created national standards to protect patient health information from being disclosed without consent. Doesn't HIPPA prevent our health information from being used to sell things? In this case, the answer is not really.
Our producer Mike works with health information, and that means he spends a lot of time dealing with hippop Here's what he had to say. I work within the constraints of HIPPA every day, and I think it's probably one of the most misunderstood laws in America. People think HIPPA protects all of their health information all of the time, but it doesn't. HIPPA only applies to a very narrow set of actors and circumstances. Basically, it applies to healthcare
providers and their contractors. Better Health is neither of those things. In a page on their website convincingly titled online Therapy Services, are they legit question mark, they repeatedly used phrases like HIPPO compliant therapists. What they don't say is that the therapists are bound by HIPPA because they're providing healthcare. But Better Health the platform is not because they aren't providing healthcare.
They're simply connecting you with the providers, and so they are bound only by the terms of service you accept by creating an account. Hippo was signed into law in around the same time Bill Clinton was describing the Internet as an information super highway. It's authors never imagined all the ways the Internet would revolutionize how we access healthcare. And so we've come to this place where most Americans believe their private health information is eagally protected. But that's
just not always true. In reality, many of the digital services we use have no greater legal obligation to protect information about our health and information about what TV shows we like to watch or what types of sneakers we want to buy. So the question is are we okay with for profit tech companies like better help setting the president around privacy and digital health services, because that's where
we're at. And one of the questions that I get all the time, because you're right, they know you intimately, like so many things about you, And the question I get is like, how is this not a hip of violation? What is making this okay? So if you are my client and you're seeing me in my private practice, I'm your therapist. Um, all the notes that I write on you is actually your property. That's all yours. You can
go to your therapist. You can be like, give you my notes, and a therapist legally has to hand that over to you. That's all of your medical information and we need to give it. So if a if my client came in, it was like, Jeff, give me all of the notes, even keeping on me, and I give it over to them. They could take all those all that mental health information and they could sell it to an advertiser. They can give it to Facebook. As a client, you can do whatever you want with your with your
medical information. And that's what's happening. When you sign up for Better Help. You're saying, okay, um, all of the like information that I'm providing to this therapist is mine, and now I'm giving it to you Better Help. You can do whatever you want with it. So that's another
way that they're able to get around it. And so one of my big things was like, oh, you know, but I can suck over Better Help if I can like go to the state licensing boards and all of the states I'd start with like California and New York and be like okay, y'all, uh therapists are seeing these clients, and they know that the client information that we like ethically legally have to keep confident dential is being given to better help and given to like advertisers. Should these
therapists be allowed to provide therapy and better help? Should this therapists be disciplined or have their license taken away? Not that I want to get those license taken away, but maybe I can like put pressure on better help. Um. And the problem is is that, like what I just mentioned, it's the client information and they can hand it over.
There also is somebody something in hippa where like hippa is just like everything has to say confidential unless maybe it's used for marketing purposes and it's anonymised, So like they also have that like a gray area. There's so many things that are protecting better help. It seems though that like stepping back to harvest all of this personal information about somebody's mental health and then use it to make advertising revenue, it just feels wrong, right, like oh
there's that. Yeah, it just doesn't sit well. It just doesn't feel okay. Um, that shouldn't be happening obviously, like abows your therapist nows anonymizing your info and selling it to advertisers, I would lose my license, uh and I should Um, that just shouldn't be a part of the therapy process. But we're in this like funky, weird, shitty capitalist whatever time where like that's okay, and they're incredibly protected and they're going to probably continue to do that.
And better help is you know, they interacted with me a little bit by like leaving some comments on some of my TikTok videos, and now they have they're just ignoring me, which is probably a very good business decision on their then, because like, who the funk am? I? I mean, you did, like your TikTok's had an impact when you were describing how they changed their you know,
their privacy policy. For a hot second, I thought you were gonna say they, you know, because of my tiktoks that got millions of views and they changed their privacy policy for the better. But then it was like, oh, they just made it even more vague. No, because of me, I made it worse for everybody. But like pointing this out there was like, cool, we need to be real fucking shady now, So you're welcome America. When I saw
the news out of Texas. It had a really deep impact on me in a way that I almost can't even articulate why. There was something about the videos that were coming out of it that just really hit me in a way that you know, you think that you're desensitized to tragedy and disaster, but something about those videos
really stuck with me. And I think seeing like the live stream with an Apple logo on it, where I knew that young people were facing really scary circumstances, I really can't shake the the deep disturbed way that that how disturbing that was to me, Like I I don't know why I've not been able to sort of like
move past it, but I have not. And when I woke up again and saw that Travis Scott was partnering with Better Help, that really it just seemed like a cherry on top of this exploitation cake where these young people had really been deeply exploited in the deepest, deepest ways for profit, to to make money for corporate interest, whether we're talking about Live Nation, Travis Scott, the organizer's
Apple streaming platforms, whatever. And then in the aftermath of that horrific traumatic tragedy, what they were being offered was just another way to serve them up to be further mind and exploited. And it was it was like it broke my brain. I couldn't even conceptualize the depths to how broken so many systems are where that's the thing they're being offered and even still one month of it. So it's like it's already shitty what they're being offered,
but it's not even that long. Some of these kids probably have like complex PTSD. It takes longer than a month to treat that. What were your thoughts on that partnership? Yeah, garbage. I thought it was a dumpster fire. I thought it was. I felt the same way that you felt. So, yeah, it's like a bunch of you know, corporations creating trauma and then sending those traumatized kids to Better Help where they're going to like mind their data and make a
ton of money. Uh. It's it was disturbing, it was upsetting, and it reminded me of when Better Help used to. I still think they kind of do this, but back in nineteen they were going to all the therapist directories out there that attract, you know, the clients that are looking for therapists, and they were just trying to like either buy them up or quote unquote partner with them in order to like take all of their business um and like direct those those users into the Better Help
ecosystem um. And so they approached me when I like launched therapy then and they're like, hey, can we go ahead and uh take like therapist profiles and add them to your directory so that if any of the people that are using your directory that uh, you know, find they could like find one of our Better Help therapists and then create services or create you know, start therapy with them. And every time somebody signs up for Better Help through therapy, then it will pay you three hundred
dollars UM, which is a ton of money. Uh. And because they're like, you could potentially make eighty thousand dollars a month because we've like made had the steal, created the steal with other therapist directories that are the same size as yours. Uh. And I know those therapist directories and I know the owners and some of them are
buddies of mine. So I was like talking to them about like what went on, and those therapist directories were like basically taken over and just used as like a funnel in order to like, you know, get even more people to sign up for Better Help. Uh. So you don't really own your therapist directory anymore. They just sort of like take it over because they put thousands and thousands, twenty thousand different therapist profiles or something like on on
your directory. Uh. And it's also like therapy done is about like matching people with like a good competent therapist that you know is a good fit, and Better Help can't do that at all. It's a therapy now. Um So it didn't feel okay, it allowed like loose control, Like it just didn't feel like a good match at all. And I like started to That's when I started to really learn about their privacy policy and the data mining
and ship like that. And I would imagine that like all the marketing that they do that Better Help does, and all the podcasts and NPR and ship like that, all of those companies are probably getting like a very nice kick back because Better Help was like, hey, on average, we make twelve hundred dollars, We bring in twelve hundred dollars when somebody signs up for Better Help, we are very much willing to like pay you three hundred dollars
when we collect twelve hundred dollars. Also, we're going to pay the therapist ship, so like it's not even like
we have like too much of an overhead cost. You talk about how the therapists are just not only are they not paid what like like a comparable amount that they can make in private practice or elsewhere, but also you know they're paying I learned from your tiktoks they're sometimes paid by the word, and so once they hit their word count, they kind of have to decide if they want to continue treating a client who very well, maybe in crisis, basically out of the goodness of their
heart because they care about this client. For free um clients can access their therapists twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, which sounds really good in theory, but then you're like, should you have access to your therapist seven I would say no, that maybe you should have some some boundaries around how you access your therapists. It's kind of stunning to hear about how much money they must be taking in via how much money gets spent gets given to their actual therapists who are like
doing the work of sustaining this platform. Yeah, I mean the therapists are getting maybe around thirty a little less than thirty dollars an hour. Um. Ideally, if you're a therapist and you're seeing clients who want to get at least a hundred dollars an hour, that's what we're like aiming for, if not more if you live in like
more expensive cities. Um. But but it helps, like we will pay you up to fifty dollars an hour if you work more hours per week, So if you work up to fifty hours a week, you'll get our top pay, which is fucking bonkers. I don't even understand why that's a pay scale that exists. Like work fifteen hours, get thirty dollars or less an hour, work up to fifty hours a week more. I don't know. That's the whole
fucking thing. I hate that. Uh. And then it's they pay you based on word counts, so you can't go over the word count that they like provide. If you do start like providing more support, if you start texting more support and going over the word count, you're working for fucking free therapist. They're not going to pay you for it. So maybe they're paying you thirty dollars an hour, but it's actually a lot less if you like feel like you need to give even more support or to
that client. Um. And of course, just like uber and Left or whatever, like you're not getting benefits your contract. You're not like getting paid time off. You know, like you have to provide all of your equipment and you know. So it's just like it's a bunch of bullshit that therapists are getting exploited, and they're able to exploit these therapists that are usually like fresh out of grad school or just looking for a little part time work or something.
And yeah, twenty four hour access to a therapist clinically no not okay, that's not creating self reliance. Uh, you need to be able to kind of like go and do your thing and then be able to check back with your therapist. I understand why that's appealing though, but imagine understand that that therapist with a caseload of like ten fifty clients a week, You're they're getting pinned all the fucking time. So there's no way that a therapist
is able. But like a therapist must have to it's in their contract that they have to respond within twenty four hours, no matter what day or time it is, which is not very realistic. Plus, um, there's this like thing where like if there's better help has like a flood of people signing up. They're like, Okay, I know that you have a ton of clients, but will you
take these new clients? Will pay you more for these new clients, which sort of incentivizes therapists to drop their old clients they're not getting paid enough for in the first place, to then take the new clients. It's such a stupid, fucked up system. I hate it. Can you tell? It's so fucked up? And this is not how therapy therapy is meant to be. This is not how it
should look to access mental health care. And you know, in the wake of the astronaut World thing, it's like it is a it's like an exploitation layer cake where the clients, the potential clients are going to be exploited, the therapists running the side are being exploited. Everybody is being exploited except for the tech overlords who like are possibly like making money from the people that are being
referred from this tragedy. Honestly, talking to you has helped me make sense of why it made me so deeply, deeply angry and disgusted, like I had such a visceral reaction. Also, just that use of the word partnership, like you know, using this tragedy as a branding opportunity. I really found it deeply, deeply, like just disgusting. And I think talking to you is really made it so clear that yeah,
that wasn't that wasn't. I was almost about to say, like an irrational response, that was a rational response, because it is really fucked up, but it is really disgusting. Yeah, it's a very rational response to a very irrational thing that's occurring. Totally. You've described all these numbers of like caseloads of forty or fifty patients a week, which like what a joke? How can you be providing like high
quality of care. I haven't heard you say anything about like the evaluation process or uh, you know, any sort of quality control. Do you know if they do um? Like I just have to imagine that the quality of care that patients are receiving is pretty low with a caseload like that. But is that something that they look at or measure or talk about. Yeah, I don't know
it's a good question. I've never come across any sort of like data or survey about the quality of care UM, So I don't know, And uh, I just feel I feel bad for everybody involved. I feel really bad for the therapist that are getting burnt out, that are kind of like forced to work longer or more hours. Um. And this is I don't know. I don't know if I can say this, So well whatever, UM, maybe we'll
head it out. But there's uh, how can you say this if you want to if you're somebody that's seeing a better help therapist and you really like like your therapist, because there's a ton of really great therapists on there, and this conversation is upsetting or disturbing you, if you wanted to ask your better help therapist, if they have their own private practice and they are accepting glimps, then that's something you can ask them, and you can talk
to them about the better health therapists obviously are not allowed to be like out of private practice. If you want to see me there and you know, even pay me if you like, pay that therapist the same amount that you're giving better help than what they're hourly rate has doubled or tripled you know by that time. Um so so, because I get a lot of like feedback like, oh, but I love my Better health therapists. Let's stick with
that better health therapist. I'm so happy for you. Also, maybe you can see them in their private practice and get out of life better Help if you want to. I think I can say that. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I think that's good advice, because it sounds like you're being so clear that you're not trying to say that Better Help doesn't have great kick ass therapists on the platform, but that the platform itself does not support these therapists for giving the best quality of care that they can.
And so there might be other ways to access that same therapist that you might love who's on Better Help in a way where they're not being sort of set up to give you not as good, not as good as care as you could be getting. Otherwise, m and your therapists in their private practice probably won't sell all your personal mental most likely they are not going to do that. More. After a quick break, let's get right
back into it now. I'm not the only one who has a problem with Better Help partnership with Travis Scott in the wake of the Astro World tragedy. The response has not been good, and Better Help is working overtime to correct what they're calling misinformation about their platform. No, it's worth noting that Better Help waited until the partnership got negative reactions online to clarify pretty basic details about the arrangement. Frankly, making patient protection seems like kind of
an afterthought. They released an f a Q where they say that people who use the free month of Better Help services will not be built after that month is up, and they say that Travis Scott isn't making any money from the partnership. Now, I've heard a lot of tech company corporate double speaking my day, and I'd like the company to clarify whether this also pertains to any business
or philanthropic entities Travis Scott might be affiliated with. They also answer the frequently asked question, is information members enter on Better Health ever sold to advertising platforms or third parties?
Now they answer this that emphatic no period. But that can't be the whole story because on their own privacy policy, in the section called Purposes for which Information is used, they say your information may be used to quote personalized website experience, including targeted offers and ads throughout our websites, third party sites, and via email or text message. They also say, quote, you may share your information with any subsidiaries or parent companies within our corporate group. So who
are these other companies in your corporate group? And what products are being advertised? It's better help using your personal mental information to buy ads or sell ads. Why rely on such vague language when discussing something as important as our health and privacy? I believe Better Health is intentionally exploiting vague language and gray areas and their privacy policies to mislead the public, which under normal circumstances is bad, but it's especially egregious to do that after a tragedy.
Do you feel like the public it is owed a little bit of transparency about this partnership. I feel like, especially given that the folks who were at that festival are are like a lot of them are young people. I feel like it is a public like a public good for Better Help and or Travis Scott to say, hey, we're doing this therapy, this therapy partnership for folks who were impacted by this tragedy. Here's who's making money on it?
Here's how your data is going to be used, you know here like whether Travis got Better Help or both are making some sort of like cut or kickback. Do you feel like it's in the public interest for us to have that information in a transparent way? Oh my god. Yes. And like in my most recent TikTok video that's on Twitter and everywhere else. Uh, I'm saying that, like what's going on, Like, let's be clear here who's getting paid? Uh do how do you continue care after that one month?
How much is it going to cost in order to like continue Like there's it's just also murky. Uh So, Yeah, I would love if there's more transparency around it. But the way that Better Help operates is just like they're very good at like making ship real vague um and unfortunately whenever I push against them or anyone pushes up against them, they just get even more vague and more
vague and get into that great area. So hopefully this will like get more people to become concerned and ask them to be more transparent about what they're doing and the deal that's being set up. Travis Scott, Yeah, I just feel like we're in this age where things that technology that is meant to be like a wellness focused thing or a mental health focused thing, we're in this weird gray area where everything feels kind of scammy and
like not really regulated. And so we have all of these apps that are sort of mental health ish or like wellness ish or like medical care ish, and you just have to act like are these regulated? Are they safe? Am I actually getting good information from like a competent
trained medical health professional. I wonder like, do you feel the same way that we're in this sort of wild West where there are so many tech platforms offering us wellness or you know, medical care, but in this very gray area way, or they can sort of avoid having to answer some of these questions about you know, the quality of care that you're actually getting. Oh yeah, for sure. And and they're so savvy, they're so slick, they know
exactly what they're doing. So you're just kind of like give this like these ish services and it works well enough. And also you know, uh, all these like podcasts or MPR whoever, like it's such a good look for them, like oh, therapy, you know, like it looks like there it's so nice to quote to quote partner with them because it's sort of like lifts their brand up, you know. So it's just like this feel good, lovely thing, but we don't know what's going on, like right behind the scenes.
And MPR, fuck you, MPR. They're like, I hate that MPR. It's like running ads all over the place. I mean it's all over Oregon with like NPR and OPB over here where they're just I'm constantly hearing Better Health and I'm emailing NPR and Oregon Public Pockets. I'm like letting them know, like I want to be on your show. This is not okay. If you understood the values of this company, you would have a fucking aneurysm about it. But like they're not on thing to me, and they're
not doing anything about it. So it's this weird like halo effect that happens when they do partner with the Better Help and like yeah, no, yeah, I don't know, I'm agreeing with everything that you're saying. So yeah, yeah, and it's I mean, you said a melibal and and I know in the podcast based specifically that Better Help has a it's like one of those ubiquitous brands that you hear if you listen to podcast, you've definitely heard a better help add and I have you know, friends
and colleagues who I'm sure do better help adds. And I'm not trying to like call anybody out, but I also feel like you have to take a little bit of responsibility for the for like not so it's not just a financial arrangement where they pay you and you
read the ad. But if you sound like you're endorsing their their values and endorsing their practices, and if you're using your like MPR voice to make this service seem really good and progressive and like a good like a good idea, like, I do think we have to step back and some hard questions of ourselves about whether or not we're allowing brands whose values do not align with our own to be kind of brandwashed by our like you know, slick podcaster voice or you know, or be
like the relationship that podcast listeners have with the with their hosts right like I feel like it's like it exploits the connection that listeners have with their favorite podcast host to make these to make brands that are not so good, uh seem like they're actually aligned with their values. I guess you said it totally. I keep on saying it.
But like Better Health as one of the best marketing teams I've ever seen there, so good, and they know exactly when to turn off their comments on TikTok videos because oh they're totally fucking off because like all the TikTok ers are just like whoa, we don't like this. This isn't like thank you Jeff for like being transparent and like like blaming their privacy policy. We're doing a spam all their TikTok videos and you can't they block
everybody like they know how to turn all that ship off. Um, so yeah, I think podcasters and everyone with their NPR voices like really need to think about And also, like I guarantee all these podcasters are not getting their therapy through Better Help, Like no way are they actually doing that. Uh so yeah, you got me all round up. I agree.
It's interesting you mentioned the you know, the halo effect there, and you know this moment that we're in where there are all these potentially scammy ish mental health services and it's it's like mental health it's only sort of recently become a thing that we all are talking about and acknowledging as like something that needs to be dealt with, but it's still like a very private personal thing. Uh. And I wonder that like contributes to the the viability
of scams like this. What you know, maybe it's a scam, maybe it's not. But like when an actor is going to participate in delivering mental health services but not respect that like privacy piece of it and just you know, completely violate those norms in pursuit of profit. Uh, it's a pretty dangerous tech enabled place. One of the good things is that it's sort of like breaking it's mental health stigma is is like reducing Uh. So that's that's also one of the things that's like a good thing
that's happening. But at what cost because there's like so much information and data sharing and like ads being directed more towards you because of this. So like yea for accessibility for like these stigmatis, these stigmatization Um. But like this is like profiting these huge tech companies so much and it's so upsetting and it's so disturbing and we
need to talk even more about it. M m hm. Well, I mean so we we we don't funk with better health, but as we know, like it can be so hard to get access to with therapists, So like, what are some alternatives to services like better health that might be a little less scammy, uh and exploited. If folks out there want to access mental health services but don't know where to start. Um. I mean I'm biased, but I
love therapy dem dot com. Uh start there. There's another therapist directory that I am in love with, Inclusive Therapists dot com um the same sort of vibe and mission and values of therapy dem dot com um. The thing is is, like you kind of have to be um okay or understand accepting of the fact that, like this is going to be a journey for you. Finding a
therapist is going to take some time. And the reason it's going to take times because you need to find somebody who's a really good match and who can competently treat you. So you're gonna have to like interview three, four or five ten therapists possibly to like find somebody who's a good match for you. It's grueling and it
sucks and I don't like it. But starting therapy don dot com Inclusive therapist dot com even just like googling somebody you know, like trying or going to psychology today, um dot com to like go through their therapist directory, buying a therapist at some private practice. Uh, you'll like the the quality of care is through the roof compared to the quality of care that you get from better help, just because the way the better help is like set up. Um,
so have some patience, UM, really educate yourself. Ask all of the questions that you want, like how can you complemential train competently? Train me? What's your background? But also like if you want, you can be like are you married? Do you have kids? Are you from this city? Where do you hang out? Um? What what do you think about? Like who's your favorite sports team? Do you garden? Whatever the funk you want? Like? Are you like ask all
the questions. Therapists don't have to answer all these questions, but I want you to ask all the questions that will make you feel more comfortable UM talking to that therapist. Ask them like do you diagnose? What do you think my diagnosis might be? What is treatment gonna look like? Um? Are you cool? Whatever you need to do? Uh? So you need to start therapy done dot com wherever the hell you want to start and then understand that you
have to like go on a journey. Honestly, if it was not for your TikTok's I would not have known any of this. Like, I don't think there's a lot of resources out there to help people understand companies or platforms life, better health. And so I'm so I'm so glad that you're making the content that you are because I think that you're helping people take ownership over there, or you're empowering people to advocate for them so eloms and take ownership over how they access these services. And
so I'm so grateful for you. Uh where can folks keep up with you? Yeah, so you can look for search for therapy then on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram. UM. I am also I produce a podcast called Swoon Love Lessons with Julian Gina. So Julian and Gina are UM sex therapists and experts, and every now and then I'll hop on and being on a podcast episode with them. UM, So you can find me. They're talking like giving love advice.
I'm an amazing and giving love advice. Uh so so that's where you can find me, UM and you can personally email me at Hello at therapyv dot com if you have any questions. The astral World disaster has turned into a hotbed of conspiracy theories. In our next episode, we'll hear from researcher Abbey Richards about why this tragedy has resulted in satanic panic on social media platforms like TikTok. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at
hello at tang godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tang godi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help
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