TikTok Expertise Agent Ariadna Jacob Sues NY Instances, Reporter Taylor Lorenz for Defamation (Unique)

Jacob says she lost all of her clients and had suicidal thoughts after posting the August 2020 article

She is demanding more than $ 6.2 million in damages. Jordan Cohen, spokesman for the Times, said the company will support Lorenz: “Ms. Jacob’s main complaint is that the New York Times gave voice to young people who felt they were abused by it. It is worrying that she is turning to legal proceedings to silence those who criticize her business practices. We plan to vigorously defend ourselves against the lawsuit. “

In the lawsuit, Jacob says that after the article was published, she lost all 85 of her clients and the money associated with their contracts, and that she had to spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. After being fired from all of her clients, Jacob said she was having a hard time targeting new talent and that major brands had ceased doing business with her company. She told TheWrap she didn’t get any money back that she said her customers owed her.

The complaint describes how Jacob had to seek mental health treatment and had suicidal thoughts after the article was published. She said she was forced to leave California and move to Las Vegas to “seek new careers and business ventures.”

“I was radioactive in my industry, according to the New York Times article,” Jacob told TheWrap. “People believed Taylor’s lies, stealing from clients, leaked revenge porn, filmed young people without consent, and pretended to be friends with social media god Gary Vaynerchuk, someone who has actually been a close friend and advocate for over 10 years is mine. “

“I’ve spent every penny,” said Jacob. “It was overnight, I went by all these people I had invested in for months and a lot longer, and now I’ve been told not to work with me in Hollywood.”

Jacob is best known as a TikTok influencer marketing agent and CEO of Influences, a company she founded in 2018 that manages up to 85 TikTok stars and has worked with brands like Mastercard and Universal Music Group. Jacobs TikTok influencers included Brittany Tomlinson, Addison Easterling, and Charli and Dixie D’Amelio. Some of them have tens of millions of followers on the platform, and five of them have been added to Forbes’ list of Top Earning TikTok Creators.

Jacob began renting out content collaboration homes for some of her clients to give them a place to live and content create together in Los Angeles mansions. However, in August 2020, several members of the content house called Kids Next Door were featured in the New York Times exposing Jacobs’ business practices and relationships with influencers – claiming that they were harassed about rent, not paid for their work, and that pressured them to produce content on a daily basis.

André Braugher Dean Baquet She said

Marcus Olin, a member of Kids Next Door who lived in the house Jacob rented, said he and his co-creators feared Jacob would sue them for failing to meet the content creation quotas she dictated. “We were expecting a quota where we could pay half the rent through branded offers. But we didn’t get enough offers to cover our half of the rent, ”Olin told the Times, adding that he had tried unsuccessfully to be released from his contract. “Whenever talents want to leave, they sue them immediately,” he said in an interview.

Another creator, Tomlinson, known as Brittany Broski, filed a state labor complaint alleging Jacob withheld more than $ 23,000 from her. Tomlinson told Lorenz that Jacob is trying to include creators in their contracts. Their complaint also alleged that Jacob was charging up to a 20% commission.

Jacob denies the claims about her in the article, saying that “nothing (Lorenz) wrote in the article was true”.

Jacob said some of her TikTok creator clients – including Charli and Dixie D’Amelio and Tomlinson – left and signed with the United Talent Agency. Others came to Digital Brand Architects, an influencer and marketing agency that was acquired by UTA in 2019.

Jacob’s complaint also states that Lorenz failed to disclose her own working relationship as a client of UTA, a company she reported on in the Times. “(UTA was) really positioned to attract my customers. They didn’t like me to sign them into physical contracts, ”Jacob told TheWrap. She says the companies went around her so as not to violate customers’ contracts.

A representative from UTA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The most powerful newspaper in the world and one of the most powerful companies in Hollywood have teamed up against me. My startup Influences.com represented social media influencers and we turned a very lucrative industry upside down, ”said Jacob. “This is not the first time the New York Times and its powerful, privileged owners have published lies to fill their own pockets and, as a result, ruin the lives of innocent people. This abuse of power in the media cannot go on like this, because while the New York Times and Taylor Lorenz act as watchdogs for the world and reject those they deem dishonorable – who is watching them and holding them accountable? “

In the year since the article was published, Jacob said she left Influences to work on a new project to create a management platform for YouTubers. She has also tried to get her side of the story out, with little success. “There wasn’t much interest in what happened to me. A lot of people don’t understand social media and Hollywood, ”she said.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK (8255) is a free, 24/7 confidential service that can provide support, information, and local resources to people experiencing a suicidal or emotional distress or their community.

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