Posted on 10/05/2009 11:30:23 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
The Federal Trade Commission has decided to focus its regulatory sights on the scourge of — product reviews by bloggers. By a unanimous vote, the FTC now mandates that bloggers disclose any payments or freebies received for their reviews, a mandate which does not appear to have an analog with mainstream media organizations:
The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.
It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers.
But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.
The new FTC guidelines actually go farther than just bloggers. They also make celebrity endorsers disclose more explicitly the compensation they receive for flacking products:
Celebrity endorsers also are addressed in the revised Guides. While the 1980 Guides did not explicitly state that endorsers as well as advertisers could be liable under the FTC Act for statements they make in an endorsement, the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement – or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
My product review of Obama . . . IT SU-KS! Doesn’t work. Arrived damaged and broken. Not even capable of the job it was ordered for.
looks like the folks at the FTC have stumbled onto a way to pass the Lifetime Full Employment Act for themselves trying to police this. (hey, did Taco Bell give you anything for that tweet about the Gordita you just had??)
Wait till my libtard “Democrats are for freedom” friends get a load of this.
“These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.
Where does the FTC’s jurisdiction end?”
didn’t the government just hire a bunch of bloggers to push for Obama’s priorities?
Then they came for The Phantom Gourmet.
sounds like this should be specific to product reviewing not “blogging”.
I would imagine CURRENT LAW would cover this.
We see this all the time with magazines that only review products that advertise inside.
I think the FTC and FCC are in a turf war.
Freedom of speech is under constant attack by the Obama Progressives as part of the transforming of America.
This piece on Hot Air is somewhat deceptive and poorly researched.
From the article (on Hot Air)
Yet, they have a link to a story on Yahoo! Finance, and that story contains this:
Where does the FTC’s jurisdiction end? If I get a free tube of toothpaste in the mail and say nice things about it on Twitter, Facebook, or in a PTA meeting, do I have to disclose it as a freebie or pay the $11,000 fine the FTC imposes? What kind of disclosure can one fit into a 140-character Twitter message, anyway?
To placate such fears, Cleland said the FTC will more likely go after an advertiser instead of a blogger for violations. The exception would be a blogger who runs a "substantial" operation that violates FTC rules and already received a warning, he said.
Existing FTC rules already banned deceptive and unfair business practices. The final guidelines aim to clarify the law for the vast world of blogging. Not since 1980 had the commission revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials.
Cleland said a blogger who receives a freebie without the advertiser knowing would not violate FTC guidelines. For example, someone who gets a free bag of dog food as part of a promotion from a pet shop wouldn't violate FTC guidelines if he writes about the product on his blog.
It seems that the concern about the free toothpaste is unfounded, at least for now.
I haven’t looked at the actual rule yet. So I don’t know if the rule is written so vaguely that it could applly to that free toothpaste, and this Cleland guy is just saying he won’t do that. Or if the rule is written so that the free toothpaste isn’t an issue. I would hope it is the latter. If it is the former, then some letter writing, faxing and emailing is called for to fix the situation and make it clear this will never be a problem.
Just from reading the two articles, I think this is really written to target a class of “fake review” blogs and sites run by SEO companies and Internet Marketers. These people will generate (often automatically with computer programs) dozens or hundreds of completely fabricated “reviews” that contain links to a site selling the products. This could be deceptive to people who stumble upon those blog and review sites. But they are so poorly done that most people would realize when they land on one of these sites that it is bogus. They exist because search robots from Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines find the pages, and the links from those blog and review pages to the web site selling the products boost the target site’s ranking in searches, especially for the keywords in the link text on the referring page. I don’t know how many people remember the links the DUmmies were spreading everywhere. The links were always the words “miserable failure” and when you clicked on the link, it took you to the George W. Bush Bio page on the White House web site. They did this so that if anyone searched for "miserable failure" on google, the top result would be that biography page about George W. Bush. There are companies out there that, for a fee, do this for products and commerce websites. They link targeted keywords to the website paying their fees, and those links are in lots of glowing reviews about the products and the site selling those products.
Basically, if you are getting paid for the review, or if someone gives you something for free because they expect you to write a good review you need to disclose that. I’m pretty sure that is a good idea, though I don’t know if we need “Blog Police” to enforce this.
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