Two Amazon influencers are in a legal battle over whether or not one has appropriated the other’s aesthetic. The Verge’s Mia Sato breaks down the claims, and legal intellectual property expert Alexandra Roberts tells us what the lawsuit could mean for the future of content creation. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Rob Byers, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Sydney Nicole Gifford and her mother, Laura, film a video promoting autumn decor from Amazon. Photo by Liam James Doyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main conflict in the influencer lawsuit?
There's a lot of things going on in the actual suit, but what it boils down to really is one of the women, Sydney Gifford, says that the other woman, Alyssa Scheel, just won't stop copying her.
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I'm Noelle King with Mia Sato. Mia writes about tech companies for The Verge. She broke the story of the sad beige influencer lawsuit, and she begins with the accuser, Sydney Gifford.
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Chapter 2: How did Sydney Gifford become successful on Amazon?
Sydney Gifford is 24. She lives outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and she is incredibly successful at this job. She has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. She makes videos that get millions of views, tons of people commenting, saving, presumably buying things from her clips.
New Amazon home finds for your kitchen. This set of stone coasters, this dish mat, these stemless wine glass chillers, and these cotton kitchen towels are perfect to have around. Shop all on my Amazon storefront.
And this is how she makes a living. This is pretty much her only job. And she's specifically an Amazon influencer because she told me that she really doesn't do other brand deals that much. She just has this partnership with Amazon.
I get literally all my clothes from one place and it's Amazon. I stopped into Skims this weekend, then immediately placed an Amazon order so we can really compare. Oh my goodness. You're telling me I spent how much on skims? Amazon has just gotten really good at this.
She's part of their influencer program where every time you make a purchase from one of her special links with sort of tracking information in, an affiliate link, every time you make a purchase from her links, she earns a little bit of money back.
So many good deals right now, y'all. Even more on my Prime Day page. So many more things are on sale. I could go on forever. I have a whole list on my storefront of wardrobe essential deals that you absolutely need, but those are my favorite.
And now think about scaling that to millions and millions of viewers who are looking for whatever crap to buy. And it's a pretty sweet job.
And what does Sydney Gifford say that the other woman is copying?
Sydney says that Alyssa is copying her vibe, basically. That's what it really boils down to, her vibe, her look, her feel, aesthetic. And there are a couple different prongs of the sort of copying allegations. One is Sydney says that Alyssa has copied what her videos and photos look like, the aesthetic. The sort of look and feel, the pacing, maybe the editing. You've copied my videos.
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Chapter 3: What are the specific copying allegations against Alyssa Scheel?
The additional allegation is that not only did you copy what my content looks like, you copied what I look like. You changed your appearance and people are getting us confused. Oh, my God.
OK. Wow. All right. So this is this is more dramatic than even I had realized. What is the aesthetic that Sydney Gifford is saying now?
Okay, so imagine a house that is black, white, cream, beige only. You look around, there is literally not a single thing in your sight that is a color other than that. Everything is like this. Everything is smooth, clean, sort of it almost feels like a dream, like a cloud. These are both of their homes. I went to both of their houses.
And I visited Alyssa first, and I was struck by the neighborhood that she lived in because it was all, like, tan. Then I stepped into her home, and it was silent and completely white. Just everything was beige and cream and white and a little bit of black. And it is this aesthetic that has come to be known online as, quote-unquote, clean girl style.
You know those girls that always look clean, their skin is always glowing, their lips are always glossed, and they never, ever look like they're wearing too much makeup? We may not be them, but here's how to get their look.
Clean girls have these beautiful, long, sort of smooth hair.
I have never been able to dry and style my long and thick hair so fast and easily, especially with only one tool.
Sometimes it's down. Sometimes it's in a tight bun, slicked back bun. They wear gold jewelry.
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Chapter 4: What is the 'clean girl style' aesthetic?
Here's some of my Amazon bracelets that I absolutely swear by. They're so gorgeous, lightweight, and I just love the way they sparkle. This is my current necklace stack. I never take these off.
They wear also beige, cream, white, black clothing. They wear chunky sweaters or oversized sweatsuits. They have beautifully manicured nails. This is the sort of vision of luxury that a lot of people look up to right now.
Okay, so lest our listeners think there are no stakes here, these women are actually making money from their presentation on video, the aesthetic that surrounds them. Like, this is actually what they do for work.
Yeah, and it pays for their life. And what Sidney's claim is that the copying wasn't just, like, annoying, which maybe a lot of people would feel that's where it ends. It also cut into her earnings. She says that she didn't sell as many Amazon products as Alyssa was copying her, allegedly.
She says that she didn't gain the same amount of followers that she would have because perhaps they were following Alyssa instead. And they sort of claim about, you know, you copied what I look like. That feeds into that where Sidney claims that because Alyssa copied how she looks, people were getting the two women confused.
People were thinking that Alyssa was Sidney and then perhaps buying things from her links instead of Sidney's links. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. And now you have made me wonder whether or not they know each other in real life.
So that's the crazy thing. They do. They have met each other. Right. Sydney used to live in Austin, where Alyssa currently resides. And in 2022 and 2023, the two women, along with a third influencer friend of Sydney's, all met up in person twice. And the meetings were kind of supposed to be like, how can we support each other? How can we support our businesses? You know, we work in the same field.
We make the same kind of videos. So maybe we can just be friends or be friendly.
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Chapter 5: How did the relationship between the influencers change?
And this goes on for a little bit before the actual suit is filed. That happened last spring. And the suit has a lot of different things in it. There's obviously what we just talked about, the claim that you making similar videos and photos, though not identical, similar content is infringing on my copyright. That's a novel claim. What does Alyssa say in response to this?
Is she taking it seriously? Absolutely. I think she was shocked when she learned she was being sued. She denies ever copying Sidney. She says, I didn't even think about this person until I had started getting these cease and desist. I was not copying her on the claim that they look alike. I should note that Sydney is a white Hispanic woman and Alyssa is a black Latina woman.
And so Alyssa's legal response to this claim is, well, we don't look alike. We are two different races and nobody could confuse us. So there's a whole different, you know, Alyssa basically is saying like everything that I'm doing is totally legal and fine. And moreover, this is just the way that influencer content looks. This is the genre of clean girl. These are sort of the tropes of that genre.
And nothing either of us are doing is unique. I thought that was a really funny response. Like both of us are basic. Yeah.
Yeah, both of us are basic. And a lot of people online, I mean, I've seen these videos of them and of others. A lot of people online are basic. It's an aesthetic, right? An aesthetic can't just be one person doing it because if it is, then it's not an aesthetic. It's like, oh, that girl's got good style.
But nowadays, everybody online is copying everybody else, whether it's like using someone's dance or their song or their clip or their meme. And then other people are just going to use it and repeat it and mess with it a little bit around the edges. How big could the implications be here if Sydney were to win?
So if Sydney were to win, it would be a pretty significant expansion of copyright law. Because suddenly it's not just about these images being identical. It's that you ripped off the vibe, the feel of my photos and videos. The reason the story was so interesting to me is that it's actually like truly unclear to me what is happening here, what the truth is. I don't know.
And I have gone through the process of reporting and writing it. I've sort of landed in different places. But one thing I keep coming back to is that it's really hard right now in our media ecosystem to understand how we are implicitly being influenced by algorithms that we don't understand, that we don't have insight into.
Who's to say that Alyssa wasn't just pushed towards this content because this is the type of content that she sees on her feed all the time. And that is what she's emulating. So there's a lot of interesting questions around really like the artistic nature of influencer content and also how algorithms mediate all of the things that we post on the Internet.
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Chapter 6: What steps did Sydney take before filing the lawsuit?
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of this lawsuit for content creators?
My name is Alex Roberts. I am professor of law and media at Northeastern University. How carefully are you following the sad beige influencer lawsuit? I'm following it pretty closely because it is right up my alley, to be honest with you. So I've written about influencer marketing and I teach courses on trademark and entertainment law and intellectual property law. So this is all my jam.
Okay, so Sidney Gifford is suing Alyssa Scheel, claiming that Ms. Scheel is copying her. And this lawsuit is real and it is progressing?
It is. So Gifford brought this lawsuit in April of 2024. So her causes of action in the complaint include copyright infringement, trade dress infringement, unfair competition, interference with contract, misappropriation of right of publicity, and more. To many experts, I think these claims seemed like overreach with very little chance of success. But...
Scheil moved to dismiss six of those eight causes of action. And kind of surprisingly, a magistrate judge in November declined to dismiss four of those challenged claims. And then in December, the supervising district judge adopted the magistrate's report and recommendations. So that doesn't mean Gifford wins on those claims, but it means the judges believed that she adequately pled them.
So at this stage, they can't be ruled out and the case can go forward. Are you surprised by that? I am surprised by that.
okay tell me why there's a lot out there a lot that content creators are making particularly when it comes to amazon recommendations particularly when it comes to this kind of clean girl aesthetic and this sad beige you know certain tones and colors that people are using a lot of it is really similar here's your step-by-step guide to becoming an elegant classy clean girl the first thing i want you to do is pick a signature fragrance
This is one of my favorite products for achieving the clean girl makeup routine. It's this Rare Beauty Eye Brightener. It's amazing and it replaces all my concealers. I personally think that gold jewelry gives off more clean girl than silver, but any like clean jewelry stack, clean girl, definitely.
And the idea that there's something protectable here under intellectual property law is somewhat surprising. Of course, photos are protectable and audiovisual content is protectable. And Gifford actually registered copyright in those things. But the argument that what Shiloh's doing actually infringes those copyrighted works is— seems like a stretch to me.
And likewise, the trade dress claim, I mean, it's really going to be challenging for her to actually establish trade dress protection for kind of her color scheme and her general style. I was just looking at the amended complaint and she talks about like her way of relating to her followers and her tone of voice. I mean, that's Not usually what trade dress law protects.
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Chapter 8: What unique legal strategies are being employed in this case?
I think it leads to concerns by other content creators that they might be accused of copying somebody's content just because they're kind of following the same viral trend or creating similar categories of content. They might be accused of impersonating somebody's look just because they make similar choices in the way that they style their outfits.
So when we talk about chilling effects, what we mean is speech is chilled. People are afraid to create new works, to do different forms of expression that might lead to claims of infringement.
Right, like imagine being scared to wear beige. I mean, listen, I don't love beige, but I've learned many women do. Imagine being afraid to get on camera and show your beige house because somebody might sue you for it because your house looks too much like her house. This is crazy making.
So I think one difference between this case and some really high profile copyright cases that we hear about Like in music, when you think about Blurred Lines and Katy Perry and Led Zeppelin or a case that Nike brings or something like that, typically those are defendants who are more well-resourced. They have a legal team. They have a label behind them. They have the ability to kind of protect.
put up a really robust defense and make their best argument. And when we're thinking about content creators at this level, we're usually thinking about somebody who's doing this as a side hustle or who's kind of trying to eke out a living, get some endorsements, get some paid promotions for their content, pull together a community, get some attention from followers.
but they are unlikely to have the kind of resources that will let them fight back, that will enable them to say, this is actually non-infringing or it's a fair use, or what you're claiming as trade dress is completely functional and unprotectable. So they're more likely to back down, they're more likely to settle, and frankly, they're much more susceptible to bullying.
So what we see in the IP context is when you have some cases setting out precedent that liability might exist, People get really aggressive with their cease and desist letters. So they say, you know, this other influencer was just found or maybe found liable for copycat posts. And the same thing's going to happen to you.
We're going to sue you next if you don't completely abandon this category of posts that you're making or cancel your account or whatever the demands are.
I wonder whether or not the platforms bear any blame for these creators looking and sounding and talking alike and having the same vibe. Because if they're pushing stuff at you via an algorithm and you're seeing one person do it, you're seeing two people do it, you're seeing three people do it, you become the fifth or the sixth or the tenth.
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