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New FTC Guidelines for Social Media Influencers

By Brad Kutner
August 01, 2023

Internet celebrities with big social-media followings are often approached for advertising and marketing deals, and the money flowing from these third-party arrangements can be in the millions. But the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved to update the guidelines for those who profit from such arrangements, and lawyers are saying the new rules involve big but unsurprising changes.

"Many of the changes reflect guidance we've seen in enforcement actions, warning letters, and various types of business guidance over the past decade and are largely consistent with the proposed edits the FTC announced last year," wrote Kelley Drye & Warren attorneys Ioana Gorecki, Gonzalo Mon and John Villafranco in a blog post examining the updates. "[N]ow is the time to evaluate your practices before the FTC does."

Among the changes are updates to "clear and conspicuous" disclosure rules. "For online disclosures to be effective, they must be unavoidable," read the recently published new guidelines after being open for public comment starting last summer. The FTC used a film producer using an online critic's testimony about the film as an example. "While the critic's review itself is not an endorsement, the excerpt used in the advertisement is an endorsement," the FTC wrote.

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