FTC Steps in to Regulate Bloggers

Filed in archive Blogs on October 12, 2009

© faungg


I liked the reaction of JD Lasica last week to the news that the Federal Trade Commission was going to start regulating product endorsement in blogs.

I‘ve been struck by the varying reactions to this week’s news that the Federal Trade Commission will now begin to regulate product endorsements not just in advertisements but also on blogs and other forms of social media. (PDF here; the regs don’t start until page 55.)

Two heavyweight bloggers and longtime free speech champions Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor — bless them — have lambasted the FTC for its move into the online arena (here are Jeff’s and Dan’s posts, and reader comments). While I think skepticism is in order, and the specifics of the government’s involvement need to be more clearly defined, in the end I believe the FTC’s move is a healthy and welcome development for social media.

I've lost track of how many reactions to the news I've read. I've linked to a half-a-dozen or so of them at the bottom of this.

I see basic distrust of the government (any governemnt - Democrat or Republican) on a daily basis. Bloggers are no less cynical than other people. And the government isn't always a completely competent, unbiased, well-oiled machine. But the rest of the media industry and advertising world labors under the same rules. This strikes me as government telling me that, well, I've arrived. And if I'm going to play on the same field as TV and newspapers... You get the idea.

Is it a free speech issue? If it was, in my opinion, similar rules would have been struck down long ago for other media.

Under the new rules, bloggers who endorse a product or service and fail to disclose to readers that they were somehow compensated for that endorsement can be fined up to $11,000. They can also be held liable for damages to individual consumers who decide to sue them over the matter. The regulations are called the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials. This is the first time since 1980 that they have been updated.

Other sources: Inquisitr (and here and here), TechCrunch, The Social Path, Yahoo! Tech, Inc., Mashable, BusinessWeek.