Can TikToK Map UnitedHealthcares' Global Workforce?

Unexpected data from social media

My reader may have noticed there wasn't an article yesterday. That's because I was stuck on a plane the whole day. By the time I got home, the day had passed, so no article for yesterday. However, I hope to make up for today in this missive. I've written previously about how United Healthcare seems to have forsworn the federal WARN Act reporting standards.

For those who aren’t obsessed with the details of Employment Law, there is a federal law called the WARN Act:

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act helps ensure advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs. The U.S. Department of Labor has compliance assistance materials to help workers and employers understand their rights and responsibilities under the provisions of WARN.

It mandates employers who are engaged in “mass layoffs” comply with the law, including:

The WARN Act requires employers to provide written notice at least 60 cal- endar days in advance of covered plant closings and mass layoffs (see glos- sary). An employer’s notice assures that assistance can be provided to affected workers, their families, and the appropriate communities through the State Rapid Response Dislocated Worker Unit (see glossary). The advance notice allows workers and their families transition time to seek alternative jobs or enter skills training programs.

I previously discussed United Healthcare's financial woes, the difficulties in their Optum subdivisions Change subdivision, and, of course, their distasteful layoffs.

I’ve also written about TikTok—a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese government—and today, I have some original reporting on the global nature of Optum, part of United Healthcare. This will come courtesy of evaluations of my own data from viral TikTok videos.

I try to keep my reporting respectful because I don't have a problem with any individual human being involved in any of these massive healthcare companies. Everybody's trying to do their job. I don't have a particular problem with offerings to other countries as long as it goes well. That's global trade. I have strong feelings about taking care of workers here and abroad. I think companies are responsible for doing the best job possible, both ethically and regarding the implications for the press. Given my snarky pro-regulation stance, I tend to highlight the other issue of massive companies acting in ways that disregard the laws that are supposed to regulate them.

So you can imagine my surprise. In a video that took all of 15 seconds to make—and I mean that literally—I was able to discern something about the scale of United Healthcar’s operations and at least one part of the world that isn't the US!

The Philippines.

I made the following video:

And I uploaded it to my TikTok two days ago. One of the things about TikTok that I've learned is that it likes motion, and if you're walking around while making a video, it tends to do better than those who are sitting there. So, I'm walking around while I'm making a 15-second video. Because of prior videos I've made, many people contacted me about what happened at their job at UnitedHealthcare. Some of them have helpful things to say, others are complaining, but some of it is news. Since United Healthcare has loathe to report any of its layoffs in the US to the federal database that tracks these things, it's tough to know what they're up to.

The above has now had over 680,000+ views. And, much to my surprise, here are the metrics on the viewers and where they're coming from:

It’s 476.5k individual people. I have very few followers (just south of 5k), so that is going to be less than a percent of any huge number. Where things got interesting was where the views were coming from…

Prior sources have highlighted that they have been asked to train their replacements in India. However, over 223,000 people from the Philippines viewed this video. It's not about the Philippines, not even remotely; it's about United Healthcare, but it tells you something about the scale of the employment they're doing in the Philippines that over 223,000 people found this relevant enough to watch, and many of them shared it with their friends loved ones.

Lest we think my kind of razor-sharp short-form healthcare journalism has a baseline level of fanbase in the Philippines, one of my more successful videos about machine learning has 114k views….? No Filipino viewership!

This is not even remotely scientific. It's not a poll; it's just one person making videos about how many people in a vast country that is not the US… have a vested interest in the role of United Healthcare.

More transparency would put this kind of speculation to rest, but that's not what we've gotten from that sizeable corporate entity, and I doubt we will. This is a global company at an almost unimaginable scale.