The Federal Trade Commission is trying to make “word-of-mouth endorsements on the net easier to believe,” said Ryan Singel in Wired. That’s a laudable goal, but its solution—fining bloggers up to $11,000 per post for not disclosing if they have a financial interest in the product they’re writing about or if it was a freebie—seems “confusing, ambiguous, and likely unenforceable in the real world.”
Sure, “blogging Payola is unlikely to go away completely because of these new rules,” said Frederic Lardinois in ReadWriteWeb. But hopefully the rules, and threat of a hefty fine, will “bring some bloggers and marketers into line.” As is, “marketers regularly approach independent bloggers (and especially mommy bloggers) with freebies” or other incentives, and “there can be little doubt” that those perks influence the bloggers’ posts.
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