As ‘recessionposting’ enters overdrive, creators are taking steps to dodge potential blowback

Amid the frenzy, some creators are wary of making videos about the potential recession — particularly those who saw what happened to other creators during the most recent financial crash in 2022. Back then, an entire cottage industry of personal finance influencers arose largely to promote and discuss cryptocurrency investing, only to face backlash and a reputation hit from hordes of angry fans after their advice didn’t pan out. 

For better or worse, creators believe that anyone who posts about the recession in 2025 should be ready to handle potential backlash, particularly if any of their fans interpret their videos as advice and get burned as a result.

Creator and influencer talent manager Maddy Carty, for example, told Digiday that she had advised her clients to focus their recession videos on how the financial situation impacts their specific niche, rather than attempting to share financial information with their audiences that could be interpreted as advice.

“If it’s just chucking more content into the void, that isn’t responsible — it’s not ethical,” she said. “I think it can be quite short-sighted, especially as things change quickly.“

Political creator Adam Mockler said that he regularly turns to journalistic sources such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg to inform his work and avoid sharing misinformation, and that he plans to begin directly citing articles and data sources in a bid to raise viewers’ confidence in his recession and tariff videos.

“In my videos, I’m always like, ‘I can’t give financial advice, but don’t panic,’” said Mockler, who is employed by the media company MeidasTouch and boasts nearly 1.2 million subscribers on his personal YouTube channel. “I always try to make sure that people are calm, and I’d like to think that I do a bit more tariff analysis than most channels.”

U.S. laws forbid anyone with a financial license from sharing personalized financial advice on the web, which means most online creators who make finance content are, by definition, not certified financial planners or chartered financial analysts. As creators step up their recession-posting, it means an increased flow of unlicensed, self-taught advice into the brains of YouTube viewers. 

“If you are financially licensed, you cannot post on social media; you cannot say what a stock is,” said Jessica Inskip, a finance creator who gave up her licenses in 2022 to pursue a career as a creator. “Even basic education — you cannot do it.”

Cryptocurrency video creator Wendy “CryptoWendyO” Owusu said that other crypto creators’ past brushes with controversy had taught her to be transparent that her videos are opinion-based, rather than sharing specific financial advice. She also works closely with licensed financial professionals, to whom she refers any fan who reaches out asking for advice.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for people in crypto to make money based on how hard you self-educate yourself, and how much effort you put in,” she said. “Disclosure is super easy to do; you just need to say, ‘I have this,’ or ‘I’m invested here,’ or ‘this was paid,’ or whatever it is.”

In 2025, content creators’ videos about the economy have skyrocketed in viewership. Over the past year, tariff-related videos by U.S. creators generated 1.1 billion non-unique views on YouTube, with 922 million coming after Jan. 1, 2025, according to data shared by Tubular Labs. During the week between March 31 and April 6, viewership of tariff-related videos on YouTube peaked at over 236 million total views. 

“TV news publishers like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have been the dominant creators around tariff-related content thus far, just by way of having wall-to-wall coverage about current events that they can parse out as individual videos,” said Tubular Labs director of product marketing Erica Ortega. “But other, smaller creators like Valuetainment, PPR Mundial and MeidasTouch have generated millions of tariff-related views by publishing a lot of videos specifically on the topic,” Ortega said. “Others, like [automotive creator] Piston Pundit, have also leaned into educating their audience about how tariffs impact their specific industry.”