Social Media and Blogging is about to be regulated by Washington
April 2, 2009
The Financial Times is reporting that Social Media is about to regulated by the FTC… make a blog post about a product you receive, you can get sued for saying the product is great if it stinks.
This is going to be ugly people, really ugly.. 99% of BDA online advertising is lying to the public… and paying off bloggers to lie about products…
Revised guidelines on endorsements and testimonials by the Federal Trade Commission, now under review and expected to be adopted, would hold companies liable for untruthful statements made by bloggers and users of social networking sites who receive samples of their products.
The guidelines would also hold bloggers liable for the statements they make about products.
You heard that.. the BLOGGER is going to get in legal trouble. hot stuff… really hot… because you know what my problem is with this… if you blog about a product in 2009 .. and 2 years later it’s proven to be unsafe… you better fire up your time machine and start deleting posts…
Why does it feel like it’s 1984
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9 Responses to “Social Media and Blogging is about to be regulated by Washington”
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Dude,
This isn’t 1984 at all. It’s about time someone cracked down on the online liars — the onliars. Advertisers and agencies have been presenting messages online that they never would get away with in any other medium. All the fake “communities” and reviews from ad people posing as the public are total bullshit.
I just learned from http://twitter.com/iplaw101 that if you receive a product for free and you’re blogging about it, you have to disclose it. So the law has always been there… The FTC is just turning it up a notch.
Great share over all.
-Jaheed.
The lesson here is, “Tell the Truth”.
On second thought, complete control over all though processes and information distribution is a chief characteristic of totalitarian governments.
“Fairness Doctrine” is a good example.
Anyway, it still doesn’t hurt to tell the truth.
The truth speaks for itself.
Anyway, good info to know.
Gray area here, my friends. Third-party blogs should be treated as if they’re editorial — not advertising. Bloggers need to be protected from nuisance lawsuits. However, if the blog is run by a company or organization for the express purpose of promoting a product or service, then it should be viewed as marketing communications material.
Earlier posters are right — tell the truth. Be aboveboard. Lying about a bad product will damage a brand more than any lawsuit can hurt.
My concern people isn’t this .. my concern is this being used as a stepping stone to make all sorts of new rules….
ads get regulated. what you do is advertising. get over it.
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Ruth
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