The New FTC Blogging Guidelines Are Creating Controversy
The FTC blogging guidelines continue to be the hub of controversy within the US internet blogging community. I have not read anything of weight on an international level; probably due to the fact that it does not concern any bloggers outside of the United States and its territories.
The guidelines have been digested, addressed, and continue to pose many concerns. I have read the concerns and confusion by many of the bloggers who have posted on various sites, and all of them completely agree on one thing: that they do not understand the scope of the guidelines and how much everyone will be affected by them.
According to Richard Cleland , assistant director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, the FTC is more concerned with how advertisers pay for endorsements and reviews rather than the actions of individual blogger and other online types (which could include anyone online).
On my sites, and in articles that I have published, I recommend products that I have tried and use myself, such as advertising and SEO.
I also recommend services that I am familiar with and know the people involved, but do not use them myself.
I also have Google AdSense on my sites that I have no personal knowledge of the products at all. Just like many sites on the web have.
I am compensated, paid for all of these, if someone purchases through my sites.
My question is where are they going to draw the distinctions between all of them?
If I am sent a product for free to review, I understand that I have to disclose that, but when I purchase the same product and review it, is this different?
In both case the links to the product in question are affiliate links that pay me when someone purchases through the link.
The other big concern is that this is only affecting US bloggers, no other internet reviewers of any kind will be affected.
So, there are only two ways to avoid this, other than trying your best to comply, with the vaguest FTC guidelines written yet.
One, is to transfer your entire web hosting oversees to foreign countries, and hope that this is enough.
Or, two, is to change your site’s scripts from blog scripts to website scripts, and add an article type of interface that allows comments from readers. But I am sure that the guidelines will find a way to include website owners if this happens.
There is a third that I forgot to mention. It is to leave the US and migrate north to Canada, or some other country that is not affected by these new guidelines.
I do understand why the FTC is doing this. It is because of the fake blog (flog) sites, and companies like, Google Money Tree, Google Home Income, and Pacific Webworks, a publicly traded company based in Utah, that are utilizing blogs to promote their scams.
It is also due to the advertising techniques of the bloggers who write multiple articles promoting known scams, and have them published throughout the many internet article directories (ezine directories), social media sites, and hub sites, like Squidoo.
The FTC’s intention is to help the consumer, which I am all for, but I think that the guidelines need to be less sweeping. They need to focus directly on the responsible parties, not just all USA bloggers in general.
How do you feel about this?
Also read these articles:
Will the New FTC Blogging Guidelines Affect You?
Newest Developments in Flog Scams
If you are searching for our current recommendations you can read about some of them here:
Real Home Income Reviews And Programs
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I think that you, like many other people, are simply missing the big picture here.
The true sea change in the law has to do with making representations that are not representative, or outliers, and then trying to disclaim them.
You won’t be allowed to do that anymore,
see: http://www.bizop.ca/blog2/due-diligence/testimonials-and-disclaimers.html
@Michael,
Welcome to Raief, and thank you for contributing.
I understand misrepresentations are being targeted. This is good, and will help curtail much of the scam sites advertising methods, but this is not the big picture, it is only one part of the guidelines.
It is a large part, agreed, in that it will give the FTC obvious and clear-cut ammunition to prosecute and fine the offending sites.
The issues that are not clear are how endorsements of products are going to be treated, in specific cases and examples, such as affiliate endorsements of products that are used by a blogger and or not used by a blogger.
My biggest personal gripe, and I am in a very crowded room of gripers, is that companies like Pacific Webworks have been around for many years using obvious scam techniques and have never been actively pursued by any authority of weight.
These guidelines will affect some of their future ploys, but will not curtail their activities, or offer any satisfaction to the hundreds of thousands of victims, that they leave in their current and past endeavors to cheat and steal from innocent people; or future victims of their scams.
They will basically remain unmolested. It is the middleman, or the advertiser of their products who will suffer the brunt of the FTC, not the real criminals that lie behind the scene and a canopy of deceit. The creators of the frauds and scams.
Raief,
This raises an excellent point. This is perhaps another tool in the pro-truth-in-advertising, anti-scam arsenal.
I did a cursory check on Pacific Webworks and saw that they are using some very conventional marketing approaches – their names don’t come up particularly with this latest bunch. They aren’t in the same kettle as the Bid-Fuel-Summit-PMI Inc. crowd – which are all independents and are stuck in scamming in order to keep their profits coming in. (Internal Ponzi.)
So we could use the FTC guidelines, not to worry about our own affiliate promotions – but instead to start complaining about the many false blogs these companies themselves have out there – particularly on blogspot.
Another approach is not to wait for the too-slow Feds to act, but to simply start complaining to blogger.com about these blogs which are doing nothing but gaming social media. At least, they would start being devalued (maybe even Google-slapped) if not suspended.
So there is a plus and minus to the Fed getting involved at all. At least it’s silly season coming up (Nov 2009 to Nov 2010), so people can tell their candidates they’d like them to keep their noses simply out of it. (Like vote them ALL out?)
Government is too slow to act on these guys – so they will always be ahead of the curve. Our real weapons are our own forums and blogs, as well as the media-connected consumer advocates who can get the scam-warnings broadcast to the newbies.
Some of us have been reporting these sites as they appear. I can think of two right now on scam.com, UkScambuster, and OneQuestion.
Exposing and publishing the names are not enough. We also encourage everyone to report them.
Our investigations show that nearly a third of the scams are coming from Pacific Webworks.
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