Jacqueline Gets Her Geek On

(Written in response to Caitin McCabe's post on Brazen Careerist.)

I'm not necessarily opposed to the principle, that is, there should be
more transparency about which endorsements are paid for and which are
uncompensated (and thus more genuine). However, I am concerned about
the burden of compliance this is going to put on bloggers and other
social media users:

1. How are affiliate links treated? Many people write "unpaid"
reviews on their blogs, but include an affiliate link to the product
(like a book review with an affiliate link to Amazon). If someone
follows the link and buys the product, the blogger has now been paid
for the endorsement. Does the affiliate ID code in the link URL
constitute sufficient notification to readers (because savvy readers
can mouse over links and tell if they're affiliate links) or does the
blogger have to explicitly state each time that it is an affiliate
link? Given that there are now widgets and plugins that automatically
convert book, music, etc. mentions to affiliate links for you without
the blogger having to do any extra work, many bloggers may not
remember to add the disclaimer every time. Are they breaking the law?

2. Do bloggers have to go through all their archives and add
disclosure to all their old posts with paid endorsements, free
products, affiliate links, etc.? This would be a HUGE chore. Also,
even if the rule is just to apply to posts published from the date of
the ruling forward, we all know how easy it is to back- or
forward-date a post, so who's to say when any post was REALLY
published?

3. How do you fit both a recommendation and a disclosure into a
140-character tweet?

Maybe as a society we should just change our assumptions? Perhaps our
default assumption should be that all endorsements are paid
endorsements unless the reviewer states that they were NOT
compensated. Then instead of prosecuting people for committing lies
of omission (forgetting or not knowing that they have to explicitly
disclose when they've been compensated for a review) we only prosecute
people for lies of commission (claiming that you were not paid when
you really were).

Everyone knows that lying is wrong and almost everyone understands
that you can get into trouble for lying about something related to
money, but not everyone knows (or should be expected to know) the laws
requiring disclosure about paid endorsements in publications or
broadcasts. Most people don't even realize that their personal blog,
Twitter, Facebook, etc. is covered by the many of the same rules
covering newspapers and TV channels. Now that technology has put the
power to publish/broadcast into the hands of ordinary people, perhaps
we should consider revising our expectations of
publishers/broadcasters to be more in line with what ordinary people
can reasonably be expected to understand and comply with.

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Something for me to read later and learn how to maximize my use of
this new platform:
http://mashable.com/2009/09/06/posterous-guide/

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