Slashdot Mirror
UK Targets Twitter and Blog Endorsements
krou writes "The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is cracking down on 'Twitter users and bloggers using their online presence to endorse products and companies without clearly stating their relationship with the brand.' They described such endorsements, including 'comments about services and products on blogs and microblogs such as Twitter,' as 'deceptive' under fair trading rules. While the US Federal Trade Commission already requires such endorsements to be labelled with 'ad' or 'spon,' the UK doesn't have any such requirement. In relation to this, the OFT has launched an investigation into Handpicked Media, because the OFT is 'insisting that it must clearly state when promotional comments have been paid for.'"
Good luck enforcing that, I wish you the best.
on the internet that says "buy this" you should be smarter. If some random dude on the street said "buy this" would you?
It's a shame, if not altogether ironic that the government feels the need to legislate ethics.
I also wonder whether users would be obliged to indicate if they were a competitor of a company, before slagging it off online.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
I miss the more innocent age of the internet before there was astroturfing.
These days, I more or less assume any favorable opinion about a commercial product is astroturfed, unless I have compelling evidence to the contrary.
There are rules in the UK and even the advertising standards agency and also trade descriptions legalisation.
And they do deal with internet adverts just as much as any other kind.
If a 'false claim' is made then that a breach of advertising rules.
But if the claims are true, does it matter?
Also if it appears on the companies own site or publication it's not an advertisement. (can't remember what the ASA/Traiding stands calls that), but I think it comes under the OFT.
So if it's an email, or in twitter or anywhere else and the claims are false or missleading or otherwise inapproprate it's handled by the ASA or trading standards.
I've reported a few people who for instance, claim to be able to predict the future.
That was put under the same trade descriptions laws a few years back, though I think that religions somehow managed to have a loop-hole for trade descriptions, false advertising and discrimination. MP's and political parties also have some or total freedom from the law because the UK has something called a parliamentary monarchy. That means that parliament acts as the monarch, royalty and can pretty much do anything they like. (though this is mainly limited to within the buildings of the house of commons, they can do anything they want with the law, including removing civil liberties granted in the past, like the right to arms so that a corrupt government can be overthrown).
This is why they didn't have to obey the smoking ban, they are royalty, chosen by God. (or whatever Royalty is supposed to be, that's the old English tradition) outside all laws except the law of God that they then bestow upon the people.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
For those dopey slashdotters like me who assumed most astroturfing is the PR dept of a major firm coming back from their Friday lunch, follow the link in the summary. Took a random path through handpickedmedia's website and then read the twitter posts of PerfHappyMum. Seems just like every other life coach (what the hell are THEY?);
children asleep two hours early!
soon followed by
Just leaving the preview screening of "tangled", most refreshing cartoon since Shreck, loved it
"She" is in the parenting "channel" of handpicked's website but on Twitter there is no indication it's paid for. Assume that a significant amount of the conversation is with other handpickedmedia's 'channels'? If they can investigate the volume going up in the adverts (what did happen to that Ofcom report? Anyone know?) then this is an organisation of cynicism that has shocked me.
Bell Canada certainly has competitors. Maybe not in every marketplace, but definitely in some.
But ofcourse you already knew that, seeing as you are working for one of their competitors. Don't try to insist you don't, it only proves it more.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Saying Bell Canada sucks doesn't mean you work for a competitor; it means you're Canadian. (And you know I'm not shilling for a competitor, because no matter what business of Bell you're talking about (local landline, long distance landline, cell, dialup, DSL, TV), their competitors suck too. I have yet to find a good telecommunications company in Canada; in fact, there are only two companies of any type that operate in Canada that it's always been a pleasure to deal with, and both their head offices are in other countries. (To be fair to Bell, I suppose online TV on demand from CTV (which Bell's parent BCE owns) is not godawful.))
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
The "Like" thing is usually true, or they just want to see the hidden picture / enter the competition that requires them to "like" it first. However, the "this sucks" portion is generally not true. If someone says something sucks on such sites, they *normally* think it does.
However, the MUCH bigger question - what idiot listens to their Facebook/Twitter friend's opinion when they are buying something for themselves, without at least asking *WHY* it sucks? People always tell me that X sucks but with no explanation. People still can't explain to me why, all of a sudden, Windows XP sucks. Or OpenOffice sucks. Or Opera sucks. If they provide reasons, those reasons are usually exactly WHY I want to use it (i.e. Opera has a built-in mail client and doesn't execute ActiveX). They normally don't like it, or it's not suited to their way of working, or it has problems they don't like, or (infinitely more likely) they haven't *really* given it a fair chance and it's fashionable to say anything non-standard sucks. That's *their* opinion and doesn't automatically mean that everyone works the same or, even if they do, that they will find it as sucky.
There are friends I have that, if they HATE a movie, I'm almost guaranteed to like it and vice versa. There are friends who piss their money away on gadgets that I think are useless or that don't suit my method of working at all. There is no point in me owning a machine that I can't easily write my own software for, for example - so their iPods and iPhones and iBooks are effectively a "games console" computer in my opinion, whereas my old XP image that's followed me onto four different laptops is much better AND plays all the games I want. They don't see it that way so my "old, sucky" laptop whose efficiency and speed WOULD be destroyed within a few months of *their* use of the same machine through mismanagement is actually perfect for me.
We bought the head of the school I work at an iPad when he retired. He was an old-school computing guy, though, so he sold it on eBay shortly afterwards. But the 600MHz Mini-ITX with triple boot DOS, Linux and Windows XP that I built for him, with built-in Soundblaster compatibility, was a million times more suitable and he took it with him to his house in the South of France. To anyone else, it probably "sucked", but for him it was perfect. I have friends that only buy Sony. I have friends that spend money on Farmville. I have friends that live by their iPhone and yet can't work out how to use 1% of it's functions. I have friends that can't operate my laptop because the touchpad (again, personal preference) is slightly offset to the left and doesn't have a defined scroll area, but it's perfect for me, because Autoplay is completely disable, and because to play a DVD you have to load VLC manually. I have a friend who only buys whatever Which magazine tells him to buy.
"Suckiness" is dependent on the user. Opinions matter but only of those people whose opinions matter to me. The chances of random "Yeah, this is cool" or "This sucks" actually affecting *ANYTHING* I do are incredibly minimal unless it's backed up by reasoning, experience and trust. You have to weight each opinion by those factors and if you do that, any astroturfing will actually end up on the bottom of the pile rather than the top. And even among the people I speak to the most, there are some where I wouldn't *touch* anything they recommended because they are inherently different to me. The person I know who works at Rackspace has been brainwashed, so I instantly discredit their opinion on hosting and network hardware because they try to simulate the datacentre they work in inside everyone's house including their own - it's *not* suitable for the majority of cases and even when it *is* suitable, I happen to think that Rackspace suck and most of what they do internally sucks. If I didn't discredit their opinion, I'd basically be up to my nose in overly expensive Cisco hardware and yet have substandard capabilities compared to what I hav
This isn't too hard. Assume that everything is crap and everybody selling something is lying to you.
Let the burden of proof rest upon reputations proving otherwise. There are writers/organizations who work hard to achieve such reputations, so take advantage of their labor. Incrementally learn to trust sources or gain that trust from other people whom you trust who have identified those sources (old friends are good to have).
Teach your children not to believe strangers trying to sell them something, no matter if they're standing on a soap box or speaking from an electronic box in the house. 'Voices of authority' that are self-interested are nearly always wrong.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I don't think there's anyone who likes their telecommunications company at all, regardless of citizenship. At best, we merely tolerate them because they provide services people need, and the competition isn't that much better either.
Be it TV, internet or phone, everyone really is sick of whomever provides the service. All the services are too expensive, the price always go up, customer service sucks, and they always overbill. And there's little effort to improve since if the rest of the competition is equally terrible, why bother?