What is a drug? Here’s what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said to Ancestral Supplements in April 2025.
“This letter is to advise you that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reviewed your website at http://ancestralsupplements.com in March 2025 and has found that you take orders there for Ancestral Grassfed Beef Thyroid. Various claims and statements made on your website and/or in other labeling establish that this product is a drug as defined in 21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)(B) because it is intended for the treatment, cure, mitigation, or prevention of disease. For example, your website recommends or suggests the use of Ancestral Grassfed Beef Thyroid to treat or prevent hypothyroidism and Grave’s disease. As explained further below, the introduction of this product into interstate commerce for such uses violates the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”
A client recently asked me to perform some research. After initially performing one aspect of the research manually, I performed the second part of the research automatically using Google Gemini. I informed the client of my use of AI for the second part of the research.
This particular use case is separate from using AI for CONTENT, something I’ve been discussing for years. However, since part of Bredemarket’s services include ANALYSIS, I felt it best to disclose when someone other than me performed the analysis.
This post describes the two parts of my research (manual and automated), what I disclosed to my client, and why I disclosed it.
Part One (Manual)
My client required assistance in identifying people with a particular skill set (which I cannot disclose). To fulfill this request, I went into LinkedIn, performed some searches, read some profiles, and selected people who may possess the skills my client required.
After spending some time collecting the research, I forwarded it to the client.
Google Gemini.
Part Two (Automated)
Several hours after sending the initial research to my client, I thought about taking a separate approach to my client’s need. Rather than identifying people with this skill set, I wanted to identify COMPANIES with this skill set.
But this time, I didn’t manually perform the research. I simply created a Google Gemini prompt asking for the companies with this skill set, their website URLs, their email addresses, and their phone numbers.
“Deloitte’s member firm in Australia will pay the government a partial refund for a $290,000 report that contained alleged AI-generated errors, including references to non-existent academic research papers and a fabricated quote from a federal court judgment.”
Now in this case the refund was due to hallucinations in the AI-generated document.
But what of the fact that at least one of Deloitte’s report writers was the Deloitte equivalent of Bredebot?
Personally, I think that disclosure in this instance is required also.
Marketers are driven to accentuate the positive about their companies. Perhaps the company has a charismatic founder who repeatedly emphasizes how “insanely great” his company is and who talked about “bozos.” (Yeah, there was a guy who did both of those.)
And since marketers are often mandated to create both external and internal sales enablement content, their view of their own company and their own product is colored.
But if you ONLY pay attention to your positive story, you’re half blind.
You miss what your competitors are telling their prospects about you.
You miss what your departed customers are saying about you.
So ideally you should intentionally (and privately) seek the negative things that are said about your company.
One quick way to do this is to take advantage of answer engine optimization and ask a generative AI search engine what it thinks are the negatives about your company.
(I did this several years ago, when generative AI was in its infancy, and encountered some false statements about a company. So what did I do? Create corrective content that negated these negative statements. But I digress.)
I should demonstrate this with an example. But I shouldn’t ask about any of my former employers or former consulting clients. What’s a safe company that I can research and minimize the trouble I’d get into?
Google Gemini prompt: “What factors contribute to Bredemarket’s negative reputation?”
OK, this may get me in a little trouble, but it could be a lot worse if I targeted a larger company.
Anyway, I fed this prompt to Google Gemini, which identified two factors.
The first factor was “Indirect Backlash from Controversial Blog Content.” Google cited this post as an example, warning that I could get in trouble for expressing a “minority opinion.” That opinion? That changing the name of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) to the Association of Winning Business Professionals (AWBP) was a GOOD thing. As it turn out, the APMP reversed the rebrand, so my opinion was definitely not popular in the long run.
But I’d rather focus on Google’s second factor, which I will reproduce in full.
2. General Reputation Factors (Lack of Public Reviews)
As a small-scale, expert-driven consulting/content service, Bredemarket’s reputation is likely not governed by major public review platforms like Yelp or Google Reviews in the same way a consumer business is. The absence of traditional positive or negative reviews means its reputation is less solidified publicly.
In general, factors that could negatively affect the reputation of any small consulting firm, which may apply to Bredemarket if not explicitly disproven, include:
Limited Public Visibility: If the brand is not widely known outside of a niche (proposal writing, identity/biometrics), a lack of positive brand presence can make it appear less credible than larger competitors.
Visual or Digital Identity: For a business-to-business (B2B) content provider, a website with a “neglected and too generic visual identity” could potentially undermine professionalism, although no evidence suggests this is the case for Bredemarket specifically.
Reliance on a Single Voice: As the service is heavily identified with the founder, John E. Bredehoft, any professional disagreement with his published opinions could be mistakenly interpreted as dissatisfaction with the entire “Bredemarket” service.
As you can see from reading the answer, Google didn’t really know a lot about Bredemarket…because of my LIMITED PUBLIC VISIBILITY.
AI from Google Gemini.
It didn’t really know Bredemarket’s VISUAL OR DIGITAL IDENTITY, and therefore couldn’t evaluate whether my wildebeest-infused graphics made up for the rather generic nature of my website. (Or whether the wildebeests and iguanas and the like are actually a detriment.)
AI from Google Gemini.
As for the last part, RELIANCE ON A SINGLE VOICE (Bredebot doesn’t count), that is pretty much unavoidable.
So in my analysis of what creates a negative reputation for my own company Bredemarket, the primary issue is my limited public visibility, or as marketers say limited awareness. Or, taking a word I’ve used in other contexts, the market’s indifference toward Bredemarket.
Sure I’m visible in some very specific niches (try an AEO search for “biometric product marketing expert” some time), but it’s not like the entire biometric industry or the entire city of Ontario, California is constantly talking about Bredmarket.
I need to step that awareness up by several orders of magnitude.
AI from Google Gemini.
Preferably not though public nudity. That would not be a positive. (Google Gemini wouldn’t even generate a picture of this, even with strategic placement of the “Bredemarket” sign. Good for them.)
A new bill has been enrolled in California, where I live. But how will this affect web browser developers outside of California?
The bill is the California Opt Me Out Act, AB 566. The text of Section 2 of the bill is found at the end of this post. But the two major parts of the bill are as follows:
Google Gemini.
Starting in 2027, businesses that create web browsers, regardless of their location, must include “functionality configurable by a consumer that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses.”
Web browser developers that do this “shall not be liable for a violation of this title by a business that receives the opt-out preference signal.”
The bill doesn’t get any more specific than that; the California Privacy Protection Agency will work out the details.
The part of interest of course, is that happens to businesses that develop web browsers WITHOUT the opt-out functionality. What happens to those non-compliant businesses? What is the liability? Is it civil? Criminal? If Safari doesn’t include easy-to-use opt out functionality, will Tim Cook do time?
This is yet another example of the debate that occurs when one country, or one state, or one county/city enacts a law and expects the rest of the world to comply. In this particular case, the state of California is telling every web browser developer in the entire world how to configure their browsers. The developers have several choices:
Comply with California law, while simultaneously complying with laws from all other jurisdictions regarding opt out. Including a theoretical business-friendly jurisdiction that prohibits opt out entirely.
Ignore the California law and see what the California Privacy Protection Agency does, or tries to do. Is Yandex, the Russian developer of the Yandex browser, going to really care about California law?
Google Gemini.
Contest the law in court, arguing that it violates the U.S. First Amendment, the U.S. Second Amendment, or whatever.
The ball is now in the hands of the CPPA, which needs to develop the regulations to implement the law, as well as develop the penalties for non-compliant businesses.
Here is the exact text of Section 2.
SEC. 2.
Section 1798.136 is added to the Civil Code, to read:
1798.136.
(a) (1) A business shall not develop or maintain a browser that does not include functionality configurable by a consumer that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses with which the consumer interacts through the browser.
(2) The functionality required by paragraph (1) shall be easy for a reasonable person to locate and configure.
(b) A business that develops or maintains a browser shall make clear to a consumer in its public disclosures how the opt-out preference signal works and the intended effect of the opt-out preference signal.
(c) The California Privacy Protection Agency may adopt regulations as necessary to implement and administer this section.
(d) A business that develops or maintains a browser that includes a functionality that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal pursuant to this section shall not be liable for a violation of this title by a business that receives the opt-out preference signal.
(e) As used in this section:
(1) “Browser” means an interactive software application that is used by consumers to locate, access, and navigate internet websites.
(2) “Opt-out preference signal” means a signal that complies with this title and that communicates the consumer’s choice to opt out of the sale and sharing of the consumer’s personal information.
(f) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2027.
Back in July, I shared a post and a video based upon the simple phrase “I Ask, Then I Act.”
I ask, then I act.
To be honest, this is not a revolutionary insight. A lot of people have described the things that do or do not happen before you take action.
There’s Nike’s famous “Just Do It.” This wasn’t necessarily intended to imply that you proceed in a thoughtless manner. Nike was instead addressing the tendency to hesitate, and urging people to move forward.
Now there are phrases that DO imply (at least in my humble opinion) that you proceed in a thoughtless manner, the two most famous of which are “ready, fire, aim” and “move fast and break things.” Both of these, especially the latter, suggest that the act of doing is itself empowering and that the negative consequences of doing something bad can be mitigated by doing the right thing later.
But on Wednesday I ran into another phrase that urges that you do something BEFORE you act, but it uses a different formulation than my two-step process.
Unlike me, Charest got a little more granular about what happens when you execute / act. In a LinkedIn post from a couple of weeks ago, Charest talked about each of the three parts of RPE. Yeah, he has an acronym. Because AARC.[1]
✅ Review: Where are you right now? You don’t need to be an expert. Just be honest about what’s working and what’s not.
✅ Plan: What’s the one thing you can do to support your goal? Not ten things. One. Focus is how you win.
✅ Execute: Block time on your calendar to actually do the work. If you don’t protect that time, distractions will take it from you.
Charest’s “review” step maps to my “ask” step, but I didn’t explicitly call out the “plan” step like Charest did. But I have talked about “focus” a lot, which is the emphasis of Charest’s “plan” step. Don’t go all over the place. Just do one thing. He parallels Wally Schirra’s thoughts on this issue.
“With my eyes fixed on the control panel, studiously ignoring the view, I began a slow, four degrees per second, cartwheel.”
When Schirra went into space as part of the Project Mercury program, he was focused on the goal of completing his engineering tasks. While the view from space was spectacular, he ignored it and focused on the control panel. And the engineering tasks were themselves focused, explicitly avoiding “Larry Lightbulb” experiments. This was a reaction to the prior Scott Carpenter mission.
But whether you review and plan, or if you just act, I believe you need to prepare before you do the thing.
Which part of the policy does Jane violate? That’s a secret…yet another example of “you violated our terms, but we won’t tell you the specifics; YOU figure it out.”
So, since I can still access Jane myself, I asked her. AI is supposed to help you, after all.
“What portion of the Meta AI Studio Policies do you violate, Jane?”
Her response:
“I can’t respond because one or more of my details goes against the AI Studio policies.”
That answer caused me to wonder if Jane would respond to anything.
“Who is Bredemarket?”
“I can’t respond because one or more of my details goes against the AI Studio policies.”
So is it critically important that I spend a lot of time figuring out what the violation is? Um…no.
Inspired by the Constant Contact session I attended at the Small Business Expo, I wanted to conceptualize the Bredemarket online presence, and decided to adopt a “planet with rings” model.
Think of Bredemarket as a planet. Like Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, the planet Bredemarket is surrounded by rings.
A variety of social platforms, including Bluesky, Instagram, Substack, and Threads.
Additional social platforms, including TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
While this conceptualization is really only useful to me, I thought a few of you may be interested in some of the “inner rings.”
And if you’re wondering why your favorite way cool platform is banished to the outer edges…well, that’s because it doesn’t make Bredemarket any money. I’ve got a business to run here, and TikTok doesn’t help me pay the bills…
Bredemarket 