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Regulating Social Media Promotion and the Spread of Information

Sponsored advertisements have become an ever increasing part of the advertising market on the internet. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission looked at sponsored advertisements through various social media sites and developed sets of guidelines to control how people are able to use sponsored advertisements on various social media platforms. The main goal with these advertising rule revisions is to ensure that there is proper disclosure that a post or video is the result of a sponsored deal with an advertiser. This measure protects consumers from being intentionally misguided by advertisers by using popular public figures and online personalities in order to push their products. The disclosure must be out and easily visible so that the consumer knows what they are looking at isn’t a true recommendation from a person but rather an advertisement.

The topic of sponsored advertisements in relation to this article can be related to multiple aspects of the course. Primarily, if sponsored advertisements are not given proper disclosure, it may produce a false information cascade and affect many different people. For example, if a celebrity is paid to promote a product in a way that would influence people to go out and purchase it, then people may be lead to make the purchase. People may see this as a direct and personal endorsement of the product rather than a paid spot to promote the product. This may lead to others that hold the person in high regard to go out, purchase, and use the product, regardless of quality. They may then proceed to recommend the product to others because someone that they hold in high regard uses it, and thus it must be good for them. Then the cycle may continue, even if there is a better product out there or the product simply isn’t good. Thus, this will lead for people to follow the majority and use the product when they would benefit from using something else.

However, not everyone is following these regulations as the FTC says that they will only look at issues on a case-by-case basis rather than issuing a blanket punishment for anyone involved. So although there are guidelines, there is no incentive for advertisers to follow them and give proper disclosure that a promoted post or video is an advertisement rather than a direct recommendation. If the FTC were to revise the guidelines to add a punishment for offenders, this move may lead to a correction for information cascades to occur based on valid and truthful information.

http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/social-media-advertising-rules-all-about-transparency.html

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