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Does anyone know about the legality of this? My suspicion is that this black-hat content marketing is perfectly legal under US law. It's only potentially a viol
by kaffee 6y ago
Does anyone know about the legality of this? My suspicion is that this black-hat content marketing is perfectly legal under US law. It's only potentially a violation of individual platforms' TOS (or publishing agreements). Is this approximately correct?
- dr-detroit 6y agoWhen I learned about SEO the guides all started from flimsy scams like these (Virtual Private Blogs used to be all the rage in SEO) and worked backwards to good inbound marketing fundamentals. Its legal but the algorithms punish it.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt may fall under the FTC’s regulations on influencer endorsements: https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-releases/ftc-publishes-final-guides-governing-endorsements-testimonials/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-re...
- kaffee 6y agoI thought this was mostly unenforced or unenforceable in cases like this -- where it would be really hard to prove that someone took a payment. I'll keep digging. Thanks! One more thing -- this isn't an explicit endorsement. It's content marketing. I rather thought that made even the FTC rules hard to apply. Also: "The Guides are not regulations, and so there are no civil penalties associated with them. But if advertisers don’t follow the guides, the FTC may decide to investigate whether the practices are unfair or deceptive under the FTC Act." https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising/advertisement-endorsements https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert... edit: more details
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoI would presume there is a 1099 or W2 somewhere, unless this is happening internationally.
- dylz 6y agohttps://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/1001a-influencer-guide-508_1.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/10...