A recent report from the Associated Press has revealed that in the US the FTC is considering regulating the blogosphere. The reason it is considering this is to stop undisclosed sponsored blog posts.
Frederic Lardinois comments:
According to the FTC, bloggers who don’t disclose that they received freebies once these new rules go into effect could become the target on an FTC investigation. These new guidelines (PDF), possibly with modifications, will most likely go into effect later this summer, and would mark the first time that the FTC tries to patrol the blogosphere.
I have to agree that I dislike the idea of conversation which has been created by blatant give-aways which are not revealed to the readers. I also hate the thought of bloggers being paid for posts which appear genuine. Thankfully most bloggers write their own content because they enjoy it not because they simply get freebies.
To be honest I don’t think the blogosphere needs regulating and I think it would be extremely difficult to police more than 180 million blogs anyway. I think it should stay self-regulating with good practice and bad highlighted by other Internet users.
I don’t think this is realistically going to happen and I don’t see any reason for it but I hope this doesn’t mean our Government in the UK will start looking at this area too as I think it would be a waste of time and resources.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
