October 07, 2009

Government forays into social media regulation

Share: posted by Sara Haji at 08:55 AM

On December 1st, the new Federal Trade Commission Web guidelines will take effect, smacking violators with a potential fine of up to $11,000. The regulations require that bloggers indicate links they have to the companies whose products they endorse. The document, the FTC's first foray into Web regulation, is a response to consumer-group concerns that readers are becoming increasingly dependent on purportedly independent blogs, and that purchasing decisions are being made as a result of endorsements that lack necessary transparency. The new regulations, with their vague definitions and loose interpretations, mark a quiet attempt by government to begin acknowledging that social media has radically altered the face of advertising. Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp are among the websites that will have to adhere to the guidelines.

While some bloggers, such as Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer and Wayne Sutton of TalkSocialNews, see the rules as mere codification of existing Internet ethics, others call it a "dangerous federal intervention in social media." Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, has been furiously tweeting his disdain for the well-intentioned regulations. He calls the "non-binding guidelines," as they're called, unworkable and impractical, and says that they function on a 20th-century assumption of advertising rather than the conversational advertising that exists via social media today. Moreover, the guidelines are virtually unenforceable, and their ambiguities leave them vulnerable to manipulation for a slew of lawsuits. The word is still out on both whether other mainstream bloggers will find the FTC's gentle prod equally outrageous, and whether the rules will result in any positive change for Web transparency and those who rely on it.

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