Forbes listee accuses Nas Daily founder of rude and exploitative behavior

This is the latest version of the article that was previously published August 5, 2021.

Nas Daily has come under fire in the Philippines after Louise De Guzman Mabulo, a Forbes 30 Under 30 listee in Asia, shared her experiences working with the media company’s founder, Nuseir Yassin.

Louise De Guzman Mabulo with Nas Daily, founder, Nuseir Yassin / Source: Fermin Mabulo

In a Facebook post, Mabulo, who is the founder of The Cacao Project, recounted her experience working with Yassin in 2019, when the online personality flew to the Philippines to cover her story.

Mabulo said she was a fan of Yassin’s at the time and would watch his videos every day with her father. For Mabulo, however, it would seem that the oft-repeated maxim “never meet your heroes” holds true.

The Cacao Project was set up to create a more sustainable livelihood for Filipino farmers by providing them with cacao plant seedlings and teaching them how to produce cacao responsibly. As of last year, the initiative helped over 200 farmers plant 80,000 trees, according to Forbes.

But according to Mabulo, when her family welcomed the influencer as a guest, she wasn’t even met with a greeting.

Yassin, she said, had gone on to say that she and her family were wasting his time. “He refused to eat food my mum had spent the whole morning preparing for him, knowing that he’d be tired or hungry,” she wrote.

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Mabulo also said that Yassin repeatedly labeled the people of her hometown of San Fernando, Camarines Sur as being poor. “Farmers are so poor,” he allegedly stated. “Why are Filipinos so poor?”

The Nas Daily CEO also slammed her project as being unworthy to be in his video. “He said no one wants to hear about farmers or farms – it’s not clickable, viewable content,” Mabulo wrote. “He didn’t care about making change or shedding light on real issues. He only wanted content – a good, easy story to tell that would get him more Filipino views.”

She added that Yassin had been exploitative and was fueling a neocolonialist narrative using the locals’ need for foreign validation.

For two years, Mabulo maintained her silence on the episode. Yassin did the same, he said in his response to Mabulo’s post, though he kept mum about it for different reasons.

“We spent two days flying, and we were very excited for your story of how you ‘revolutionized the cacao industry in your province,’ according to the internet,” Yassin wrote. “To my biggest sadness and surprise, your story was not true on the ground.”