FTC cracking down on blogger payola

[ironman]

NJ5 said:

ironman said:

NJ5 said:

ironman said:

You cannot "defraud" a person without their concent on this matter. People have a choice to take a sleezy blog poster at face value if they wish.

Go tell that to a judge after you cheat someone, then come back and tell us how it went...

 

See, that's a different situation, People are not wronged in any way other than given false information from an already sketchy media outlet. Nothing is physically taken away from the people reading the blogs (save for a few brain cells) Nobody loses anything in misinformation, and quite frankly, if they don't check more creadible sources, then thats their problem.

Are you kidding me? Of course people lose something in misinformation... they lose their hard-earned money on products which don't fulfill expectations created by false advertisement disguised as an honest review.

Look, this is very simple:

1- False advertisement is wrong and it's forbidden.

2- Bribed bloggers are a new way of doing false advertisement.

3- Therefore, bribed bloggers should be forbidden from doing false advertisement.

Your defense of saying it's a sketchy media outlet doesn't work in reality... the legality of false advertisement shouldn't be affected by where things happen, after all law is supposed to be as universal as possible.

If I rob someone in a dangerous neighborhood I'll still get arrested if I get caught. Saying that the robbery happened in a "sketchy area of town" doesn't defend the criminal in any way. Yeah, people may be stupid for trusting blogs, and they may be stupid for going into dangerous neighborhoods... but that doesn't mean it's legal to cheat and steal.

 

Nobody is physically robbed of anything here, and that is the distinction I am trying to make.