I spent a few months in the big Facebook FMT group trying to see what was going on. My conclusion is that it's very obviously controlled by Microbioma. And I'm quite surprised by how many people are acting as if everything is normal; including academics and other similar persons who should be strongly opposed to such a disreputable operation.
It doesn't seem to just be one person or a small group of people. It seems to be 15+ accounts by a marketing agency or something like that. And there's often new accounts brought in to continue the same behavior but make it seem more organic. They're also on many more groups than just that one.
The admin seems to be in on it as well. Any comment critical about Microbioma goes missing. And they even started removing comments that mention other providers, so that it seems like Microbioma is the only option available to anyone.
Any time someone asks about provider options it's only Microbioma mentioned. And it's always the same handful of people. Even when it doesn't make sense like "who's the most affordable", which Microbioma obviously isn't.
I saw in some reddit comments that Sue Pa was accused to be a ring leader. I went to her for her side of the story and she lied to me. Everything I saw and experienced in that group seems to confirm the accusations I read on reddit and elsewhere. She's trying to turn it into a "war" instead of a scammer retaliating for being outed. Someone else also called her out on her obviously-ungenuine behavior, and it was removed.
It's quite a toxic environment in that group. There's a group of people who troll anyone who mentions their target in a neutral or positive way, or shares information they don't like. They try to bully people into silence and cause as much chaos as they can. They even do it to each other, while still hitting their targets in the crossfire. As a result, people left the group voluntarily so now it's even more of an echo chamber.
Their attacks can be extremely vicious; aimed at destroying the reputation of their detractors. They never present any support for their claims and accusations; they just make broad, unfalsafiable statements. Sometimes they make general inferences to a broad location like "reddit", and when I look into it the evidence and discussions seem to disprove the accusations. It was to the point where I was wondering if they were doing it on purpose, i.e. scammers or hired goons with a bit of a conscience, giving people enough info where they could be alerted to the scam if they did their due diligence. I know that's often the mindset of scammers as well - i.e. "it's their fault for being stupid".
I felt responsible to try to warn a few people, but myself and others just got trolled by the group of troublemakers as a result. Some of the people I warned may have just been more Microbioma accounts. I'm not sure there's much anyone can do other than share information publicly so people can research it for themselves if they bother. Facebook is pretty notorious for not being a good source of information, so people still treating it as a reliable source are kind of asking for trouble.
The quality of information there is pretty bad, so it's not like anyone's missing out on anything. A few people pretend to be experts but they seem to either be bullshitting or taking info from reddit and
https://humanmicrobiome.info/ without providing credit or mentioning or linking to the source.
I guessed that many of the people openly declaring that they're buying from Microbioma were just Microbioma accounts, since who in their right mind would buy a highly risky medical product from someone exposed to be a serial liar. But I think some of them might be real people. Which makes me wonder if they don't bother doing any research outside of a couple facebook groups, or if they did read everything and still purchase from them despite there being many other better and cheaper options.
I can see why people avoid making themselves targets of this group, but at the same time the inaction allows them to flourish, and that harms all of us, as well as the whole field. This whole thing seems so sad and unnecessarily destructive and harmful.
I agree with what you said about the community having some responsibility so that we don't end up with only these kinds of disreputable providers. So I tried to do what I could, but unfortunately there was little assistance from others. A few people messaged me saying they were afraid to speak up due to retaliation.
Recently, they either toned down their attacks, or got better at hiding their activity. But also, their activity seems to correspond with the amount of orders they get, i.e. they go more silent once they're getting lots of orders.
Overall it's pretty remarkable that the seller of a risky medical product who was exposed to be a serial liar could continue to thrive as if nothing happened. You would think that most people would be outraged and help warn people.
I appreciate everything you do and hope that groups like this don't bring an end to it.
