FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments

[Joanne98]

Source: AP


Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon.

What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all.

The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers -- as well as the companies that compensate them -- for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer -- and getting commissions for any sales from it -- would be enough to trigger oversight.


Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FTC-plans-to-monitor-blogs-apf-4106175840.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=1&asset=&ccode=

[sandnsea]

1. But online advertising everywhere else is a billion dollar economy?

WTF is this shit? Go after the little guy and pretend the exact same thing that funds the rest of the internet is completely different? Let's not worry about how million dollar ad campaigns slants cable news and newspapers. Nah, let's worry about a $20 blog post.

Note, I've never gotten a dime for a blog post, anywhere.

[Joanne98]

3. I know it's bullshit. Let the big guys get away with murder.

Let them loot the treasury then make the little guys pay the bill.

[Journeyman]

2. "The Grid always provides facts, but facts don't always reveal the truth" . . .

-- Pete Townshend, Psychoderelict (1993)

Caveat emptor.

[Uncle Joe]

4. So who holds the corporate media owners responsible for "false claims" on the commercials they run?

If individual bloggers can be held accountable for "false claims" on a product of which they have no control, then certainly it goes to follow, the corporate media owners should be held liable for any "false claims" of products they've advertised.

Has anyone out there bought a product after seeing or hearing a commercial on television or radio or an advertisement in the paper only to find out it didn't work as advertised?

I wonder how many owners of the corporate media, the FTC went after when smoking cigarettes was being advertised as being healthy for you and later marketed toward kids, were the tobacco companies the only ones ever held liable?