My Aspirational Content Platform Use

John Vandivier

I'm a social media influencer with over 10k followers on TikTok and thousands more across other platforms. This article talks a bit about how I currently use that platform and also how I'd like to use it in the future.

My background includes expertise in economics and technology, but so far I have limited my commentary on economics because I have a strong preference for applied economics and the regulation on financial advice in the US chills my speech.

In the future, I'd like to increasingly discuss economics including applied microeconomics. This form of speech greatly overlaps with regulated financial investment advice. As a result, I'm in the process of selecting one or more certifications to legally affirm my ability to act in this capacity.

In addition to certification, financial advice has some exemptions which apply to me and my platform:

  1. Members of the press
    1. My platform in part covers news in the areas of technology, economics, and current events.
    2. I believe my platform constitutes press and I constitute a member of the press according to national US law and New Jersey state law. I didn't audit every state in the US and I'm not a lawyer but I suspect a substantial number of other states have state-level definitions that are substantially similar to the NJ definition.
    3. I meet the definition of a social media influencer which I think strengthens my claim in this regard and may also grant additional speech protections utilizing the status of a public figure.
  2. Educators
    1. I already teach people how to code and I'd like to teach them more about the economy, from personal finance to macroeconomic concerns.
    2. I hold a Ph.D. in economics which makes me highly qualified to teach on the subject.
    3. I think learning to code and economic education are linked. I advise people to learn to code on the basis of economic reasoning. Likewise, successful programmers often earn a high income and therefore have a special need for economic education.
  3. Engineers
    1. I heard that an exception exists for engineers, which seems a bit strange, but in any case I'll take it. I am a software engineer, and I teach people to code. Teaching is incidental to my work in multiple ways, and one example would be that I can refer people for hire after they learn. Moreover, I work at a fintech and I have previous experience at the intersection of finance and technology, so there is the occasion for me to discuss the broad economy, industrial economic concerns, concerns in the labor economy, and concerns in the markets for educational spending which can be viewed as a kind of investment, all from time to time.