The FTC vs. Bloggers: Word of Mouth Guidelines or Caste System?
May 28th, 2009 · 2 Comments
As you may have heard, the FTC has been floating some possible updates to their “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” and the Internet has been buzzing about it for quite awhile. There’s been a lot of undue whining about bloggers being expected to be honest, but the potentially troubling parts of these guidelines speak to what appears to be an FTC belief in some sort of communications caste system, wherein disclosure requirements differ, depending on who you are. Alas, they don’t really define these differences very well. While a great deal of the coverage getting hype seems to involve “mommy bloggers” hyping their sites and being outraged, let’s take a look at the actual language being used in the “material connections” section of these guidelines without getting into individual personalities.
The meat of these guidelines is about advertising, but what has the collective panties of online marketers and “bloggers” (the possibly incorrect term being bandied around) all up in a bunch is the questioning of the relationship with an online reviewer and the company behind the product being reviewed (a positive review being deemed an endorsement, officially). Particularly if there is a review copy of a product involved. Here is the main passage from the suggested guidelines that’s getting the most play, and where it talks specifically about online content and bloggers:
§ 255.5 Disclosure of material connections.
When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected
by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed. For example, when the endorser is neither represented in the advertisement as an expert nor is known to a significant portion of the viewing public, then the advertiser should clearly and conspicuously disclose either the payment or promise of compensation prior to and in exchange for the endorsement or the fact that the endorser knew or had reasons to know or to believe that if the endorsement favors the advertised product some benefit, such as an appearance on TV, would be extended to the endorser. Additional guidance concerning endorsements by celebrities and experts is provided by the examples below.
Example 7: A college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert maintains a personal weblog or ‘‘blog” where he posts entries about his gaming experiences. Readers of his blog frequently seek his opinions about video game hardware and software. As it has done in the past, the manufacturer of a newly released video game system sends the student a free copy of the system and asks him to write about it on
his blog. He tests the new gaming system and writes a favorable review. The readers of his blog are unlikely to expect that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact would likely materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge.
The general intent of most of the proposed rules in the Guidelines is to curb unlabeled advertorial content and misrepresentation, particularly by an advertiser paying someone to say something positive. That’s a fine and noble goal, but in classic government fashion, the way the rules are written leave a lot to be desired.
#1 Online content or blogger?
When there are examples in the guidelines involving opinions being given online, everyone is a blogger (there’s an example from a previous section about a blogger giving a false description of a product). Nothing in the actual rules is focused specifically online and the rules are theoretically supposed to be across all mediums, but they keep referring to bloggers. This is unfortunate, as a blogger is simply somebody who uses a type of content management system called a “blog.” Oh, look: a newspaper that’s on blog software. Now are we supposed to be lumping newspapers into these disclosure guidelines or just non-official blogs? What about bloggers that work at a newspaper? What if I put my content online in plain old static HTML? Does HTML not count? It should, but the FTC doesn’t state online scope and gives two examples of bloggers. Probably, this is just sloppy example work, but the scope ought to be defined a little more specifically.
#2 The Internet Caste System
If we assume that the FTC doesn’t really mean that bloggers can’t be trusted, then we need to pay more attention to the phrase:
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June 6th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Excluding twitter for the moment, why not use an existing paradigm to deal with affiliate links – semantically as microformats?. Something as simple as rel=”affiliate” might be sufficient. A more complex microformat might identify the advertiser or network (a la rel=”license” microformat”).
This way, the small percentage of people who may be concerned can download the inevitable plugin if needed, management and links to privacy and disclosure pages automated, etc. Of course, the real drivers of this may need to the actual affiliate programs – if CJ for example put this in their auto code generation tool.
As for Twitter, the major URL shorteners like BudURL could simply set up a complementary domain for affiliate/sponsored links and maintain the disclosure on their site via a link preview function. Again, it would help if Twitter then autotagged the URL.
A modest proposal, at least. And requires no one else’s permission to start!
June 24th, 2009 at 10:12 am
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