Saturday, January 2, 2010

What Is The Latest FTC Rules?

Somebody told me about this FTC (Federal Trade Commission) rules suggest that bloggers or other consumers who "endorse" a product or service online may be liable for civil penalties if they make false or unsubstantiated claims about a product or fail to disclose "material connections" between themselves and an advertiser. They also mandate that any blogger who offers an endorsement in their postings must disclose any payments received for the acknowledgement. Failure to do so could lead to a penalty of up to $11,000. I had only heard about this today besides of the fact that this rule had been endorsed last October. Many bloggers was wondering how it has affected your blogging. Some think that many paid blogging companies will go down the tubes because of this. Now I realize that this is the reason why other paid blogging companies have already changed their requirements for paid posts. Even paid tweets on Twitter have to be annotated with #ad or #sponsored.
To those bloggers who are accepting sponsored post and are not aware of this rule, please make sure that you are not violating this rule. Let us be careful. Well, FYI, my blog has a blog-wide disclosure policy at the right bottom, and on some of my post, it has disclosure badge, too. Happy blogging!

3 comments:

Rossel said...

bloggers here are not affected but it's good to have a site-wide disclosure policy.

happy new year, Grace! sorry for dropping by just now. i got so busy last holiday season. may you have a fruitful 2010.

Arvin U. de la Peña said...

this is nice information..

Unknown said...

Hi Grace, this is very informative, thats for sharing.

Tess (life is beautiful)