The Federal Trade Commission recently settled with “TmarTn” Martin and Thomas “Syndicate” Cassell, two social media influencers who are widely followed in the online gaming community, on charges that they deceptively endorsed the online gambling service CSGO Lotto, while failing to disclose they jointly owned the company. They also allegedly paid other well-known influencers thousands of…
WB Caught in Shadows by FTC Warner Brother’s popular video game Shadow of Mordor got a new audience – the Federal Trade Commission. WB promoted the game using paid influencers to post positive reviews on YouTube. This including hiring influential gamers to post videos promoting Shadow of Mordor – videos that ultimately yielded more than 5.5…
In 2009, the Federal Trade Commission updated its endorsement guidelines to, among other things, include bloggers. In 2013 it updated its DotCom Disclosure guidelines to address social media. It issued numerous warnings before finally cracking down in 2015 in the AmeriFreight matter. For the past several years, the Federal Trade Commission expressed increasing concern over the use…
FTC GOES AFTER ROCA LABS FOR “ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRUTH” AND USE OF GAG ORDERS Last week the Federal Trade Commission filed an enforcement action against Roca Labs, Inc. and Roca Labs Nutraceutical USA, Inc.; as marketers of a line of weight-loss supplements who allegedly made baseless claims for their products, and then threatened to…
April 20, 2015 A Dozen Things in Tech You Need to Know Happy Patriot’s Day! Patriot’s Day commemorates that Battle of Lexington and Concord and the “shot heard ’round the world” that began the American Revolution. It is a holiday in Maine and Massachachusetts and celebrated by, among other things, the running of the Boston…
FTC Sanctions AmeriFreight for Touting Incentivized Reviews As reported most recently in FTC Declines to Take Action Over Yahoo! Astroturfing, the Federal Trade Commission had shown great reluctance to sanctions firms for violating the Endorsement Guidelines updated in 2009 to address social media. In December, however, the FTC sanctioned Deutsch LA for using its employees to…
