Does anyone know where to report violations like this? I've seen many in the past, and I've tried using the FTC report a violation tool, but none of the categories seem to hit this. Too bad, because crowdsourcing the detection of these violations would make the FTC's job a lot easier!
This is how the business of online promotion works. I had a first-in-its-niche company that was copied by spammers and seriously outcompeted with this kind of under-the-table promotion, which I had, to that point, refused to perform myself. And my company hurt substantially because of it (though it was ultimately destroyed by a legal threat from a Fortune 100); went from the only provider to third or fourth place, despite indisputable superiority to the spammy, pump-and-dump competitors.
The reality of online promotion is that if you want to win, you have to play the game. That means paying for placement in link rings and astroturfing hard. It means ignoring official advice from all platform providers as disinformation. Critical to the survival of any company is amassing a large multi-million dollar war chest before a lawsuit comes knocking, because the lawyers will be taking their pound of flesh, especially if you're going against a corporate bully that is more than happy to spend tens of millions of dollars just to teach you that they're not to be defied by the peons. Doesn't matter what the law actually says, only big companies can afford to fight.
This all being the case, I seriously doubt the FTC will make a real dent in undisclosed promotion, no matter how aggressive they get. Undisclosed promotion probably makes up 30% of the content on the web.
This case is likely as simple as FTC going after WB mostly because they knew they could get some good revenue out of them.
> It means ignoring official advice from all platform providers as disinformation.
This is a painful and revealing comment, and your post certainly isn't the only place I've seen it. The standard wisdom is that advice from platforms is either meaningless, or a guide to exactly how far you can go down their "not recommended" paths without catching a ban.
I'm not sure that there's any decent answer to this; all the evidence suggests that for some markets dishonesty and misleading promotion are the best possible tactics. What good are corporate ethics if the first person to act unethically will outperform all honest competitors?
you're spot on here, have some relevant experience, I tried to stay above board and not 'cheat' but quickly changed my tune as our competitors started eating us. Don't think the FTC knows how deep this rabbit hole goes. It's play dirty or die 100%.
Understand the FTC gets a ton of complaints, in many cases for things that are much more egregious. I'm not sure what the weights between volume of complaints and detailed documentation of a problem contribute to initiating an investigation.
Unfortunately that link doesn't lead to anything that can be used to submit this type of complaint. The categories are all wrong, and even in the general/catch-all category, the questions don't fit this type of issue.
I realize the FTC gets lots of complaints, and that some issues they deal with are more egregious than this. However, violations of this nature (but related to other products) are potentially very serious and can have repercussions for both violators' customers and competitors.
I'm the founder of an edtech startup, so that's the area where I have the most experience. There are many teacher/bloggers who have blogs where they talk about edtech tools they like. They give the appearance—both to readers, and to companies—that they're blogging/tweeting/etc. about things because they think they are effective tools for learning.
The blogs have intake forms for requesting a product review OR requesting sponsored content, but the auto-emailed response is just a rate card. Following up to ask about product reviews (and even mentioning having won major relevant awards, which indicate a review-worthy product) leads to more rate card responses. In some cases, it's pretty clear that all of the posts are bought and paid for by companies.
Some bloggers have no disclaimers to this effect (and other teachers who read the site would have no idea that sponsored content exists, since they just read the "reviews" and don't look at the pages that refer to sponsorship). Other bloggers have a generic disclaimer, at the very bottom of a sidebar (which extends so far vertically past the primary content, no one ever sees it) that says that some content is paid for. But rare is the case where the blogger actually says "This post was paid for" and "This post was not paid for"—which is precisely what teachers and parents who read the site would want to know.
I'd rather not provide links to offending sites, since I'm not anon here and don't want teacher bloggers to hate me and my company. I realize they don't make much money and need to supplement where they can (my mother and wife are educators), but there are more transparent/legal ways to do this.
This is true in every niche as far as I know. I am convinced that the vast majority of blogs that show up in search results are paid content mills and otherwise engaged in SEO operations, like paid link rings.
Based on conversations with other founders who have worked in various industries, I have had this suspicion as well. Some founders have no problem participating in the system ("it was like this with magazines—you bought advertising and then the wrote an article about you"), but others share my view and are trying to grow via different paths. Would be very interested in others' thoughts on what's worked for them!
