Keep your hands off my social media FTC!

Yesterday, the FTC announced on its website that “it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act.”  Buried within the announcements is a new guideline for social media.  It states:

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.

You have got to be kidding me.  Social media is conversations.  If we start down this path of regulating what has to be said in social networking, where will it end?  Will celebrities have to announce all of their brand relationships anytime they have a conversation with someone?  What if Shaq sings the national anthem at the ball game and then tells everyone he’s about to go eat a hotdog, does he need to announce that he is a sponsor for Oscar Meyer?

And who is a celebrity at this point?  Are we going to have rules that anyone with X amount of followers or connections on a social network has to provide this kind of information too?

I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this but to me, we’re going down a very dangerous path here and I think the FTC has made a big mistake.  Social media isn’t something that should be governed like this.

4 Comments

  1. StevenMoore on October 7, 2009 at 9:27 am

    Time to build the ” I am sponsored by” widget that travels with you everywhere you go online and to sign up for money with a company you have to go thru my clearance house ( website) so it can be reported to Uncle Sam. I get payed on both ends.LOL Your Avatar would look like the best NASCAR driver suit.

    Funny I started out as joke, now have to pay attention to how this will come down and use my network to crowd source funding, names, logo's, legal, patents, trademarks etc,etc,. Jeff look what you started… LOL



  2. Jeff Hilimire on October 7, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    LOL, great comment Steven. The FTC wants so badly to control every thing that they're not realizing what effects this might have down the road. You can't regulate social media like this. It's absurd.



  3. StevenMoore on October 7, 2009 at 4:27 pm

    Time to build the ” I am sponsored by” widget that travels with you everywhere you go online and to sign up for money with a company you have to go thru my clearance house ( website) so it can be reported to Uncle Sam. I get payed on both ends.LOL Your Avatar would look like the best NASCAR driver suit.

    Funny I started out as joke, now have to pay attention to how this will come down and use my network to crowd source funding, names, logo's, legal, patents, trademarks etc,etc,. Jeff look what you started… LOL



  4. Jeff Hilimire on October 7, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    LOL, great comment Steven. The FTC wants so badly to control every thing that they're not realizing what effects this might have down the road. You can't regulate social media like this. It's absurd.



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