An improvement? I'm not sure, but I'd like to think through it..... In the traditional case there are sponsorships where pre-existing fame unrelated to the tar

An improvement? I'm not sure, but I'd like to think through it..... In the traditional case there are sponsorships where pre-existing fame unrelated to the target paid promotion is used to lend the target a false veneer of legitimacy through that fame. Not so great. In the "Influencer" case a person has sort of deliberately & explicitly set themselves up as a broker-dealer [1] of attention they have aggregated from the masses of the internet population. Their endorsement of a product/service is no more valid than those with traditional pre-existing fame. So, also not so great. And when I reference the democratization of this sort of paid shilling I'm thinking about it from the perspective of those doing the shilling: There are more opportunities to everyday people to get in on that by hustling to become an influencer. But there's another population to consider: those who consume the content & paid shilling. The average consumer probably understands that the athlete/actor/whatever that is, for example, shilling a Citi Bank credit card has no special expertise in banking, comparative appraisals of different credit card offerings, etc. They know it's just a paid gig for the celebrity so the bank can forge a pleasant psychological association for consumers. On the other hand, influencers often represent themselves & their paid endorsements as if they were authentic/organic opinions on whatever product or service they're being paid to shill. In the later case it seems like there's a lot more potential for people to be deceived & not realize that the influencer's opinions were sold to the highest bidder and aren't authentic representations of their true thoughts on the product/service. In that respect, no, not an improvement at all. Quite the opposite. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broker-dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broker-dealer