FTC cracking down on blogger payola

[famousringo]

ssj12 said:

thekitchensink said:

Zlejedi said:
This has potential to be serious dent in freedom of speech and promoting more politicall correctness.

Not really--all it does is make sure that a critic actually backs up his statements.  That said, if it cleans up their mouths on the way, I'm all for it.

It is actually a little bit of both. It makes critics back up statements but it can have a negative effect on freedom of speech too.

This law made it so I cannot post on my Twitter, "I just saw Movie X, it sucked." I have to give a massive explaination which with Twitter's text limit probably wouldn't allow someone to properly do.

How is this law going to differentiate between a general person, a person being paid off by a company for their statement, and a critic? it can't.

I don't think they're trying to make every person justify their internet opinion or face penalty, I think they're just trying to make a framework whereby if a person consistantly raves about the quality of Universal's films, and is later found to have an undisclosed arrangement with Universal, that person can be punished.

Penalties can be easily avoided by either not having a conflict of interest, or by openly disclosing your conflict of interest (which responsible bloggers already do). There's no need to alter your opinion or keep quiet about it, even if you're a paid employee of Universal or some marketing agency.