Posts with tag "FTC"

CobWEBS Daily Edition podcast: Social Media is all about a shift in power

Category: Podcasts
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Posted 1224 days ago

cbn1-podpost Tonight’s show with Sean and myself centers around much of the day’s news that had to to with the FTC. From making silly statements about not really knowing how to enforce their regulations on blogger disclosure through to playing footsie with tech companies in their Net Neutrality hearings.

The show’s conversation wound its way around to the talking about the copyright laws and how they are under attack as well as the effect that Social Media is having on our society in ways that is unnerving to some.

Posts referred to in the show.

FTC Not Sure How to Enforce Blogger Disclosure Rules – Wall Street Journal
Net Neutrality is a good thing as long as it screws with copyrights – The Inquisitr

Enjoy the show

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CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast: The FTC Disclosure Fiasco – It’s all over but for the crying

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Posted 1266 days ago

cbn1-podpost Well this is a day to mark on a calendar somewhere since Sean is joined by Mark for the second day in a row but he figured that because Sean and I had our fun with the whole FTC disclosure regulations it was only fair that he got his chance.

So in light of Louis Gray’s donation to bloggers worldwide of some great disclosure icons to which Mark has added his own set Sean and Mark figured that tonight’s show could further the discussion about the FTC regulations and how they center out bloggers.

Posts referred to in the show

FTC Disclosures Made Simple For Bloggers With Conflicts – Louis Gray
12 Handy FTC Disclosure Badges [pics] – SiliconANGLE

Enjoy the show

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Louis Gray saves the blogosphere from disclosure hell

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Posted 1267 days ago

crying For those of you in the blogosphere who have been hiding under a rock the time has come to start getting all your disclosures ready for all those millions of times when you sell you soul – or at least write a post or two – for crap goodies sent to you by companies.

The only problem is that we have to write so many of them and for all different types of incredibly useful goods that it’s hard to keep track of which disclosure to use for which ass-kissing sucking up useful post.

CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast: It’s FTC Eve, have you put out milk, cookies & disclosures?

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Posted 1270 days ago

cbn1-podpost Yes folks it’s Monday and there for the start of another week of the most excellent podcast starring Sean P. Aune and myself in tonight’s show. In light of tomorrow being the first of the month we figured that what better topic to start the week with than the impending implementation of the FTC witch hunt regulations for bloggers.

For those that don’t know tomorrow is the first day where you are going to be required to plainly disclose your relationship in every single post that has to to with review products. Doesn’t matter if the items are hardware, software, or books you have to inform your otherwise brain dead (at least this is the FTC’s opinion) readers who can’t tell that they are being shilled to.

There’s still a whole bunch of questions that the FTC has failed to answer about this whole thing. Like – where are the disclosures suppose to go? Do we have to go back through all our archives and add disclosures? Does this apply to only American bloggers whose blogs are hosted on American servers? Does this apply to bloggers who live in other countries but host their blogs on servers in the US.

In other words we know squat but can still get screwed for $11,000 if the FTC decides we messed up somehow. And a Merry Christmas to you to.

Oh and ya we also spend a minute or two on the sad heart-breaking story of the Crunchpad.

Posts referred to in the show.

Get Ready for Blogger Shameless Tuesday (And Help Us, Too) – Valleywag
Disclose This: I Can’t Disclose Everything Everywhere! – Louis Gray
Why the CrunchPad mattered – CrunchGear

Enjoy the show.

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CobWEBs Daily Edition podcast – FTC’s mysterious Mr. Cleland responds – confusion continues

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Posted 1324 days ago

Yes once more we continue the conversation about the new FTC guidelines but this time with some fresh fodder since mysterious Mr. Rich Cleland, the FTC point man on this, saw fit to respond today over at FastCompany.

This of course gave both Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Sean P. Aune your hosts for tonight’s show plenty to ruminate over – at least while they weren’t trying to figure out exactly what was being said by Mr. Cleland.

Enjoy

To the FTC that whole Trust Agent thing is nonsense

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Posted 1325 days ago

As I have been covering the recent FTC guidelines over at The Inquisitr one of the things that occurred to me was the effect that these guidelines will have on the idea of Trust Agents. For those of you who haven’t heard about this idea it is the basis for a book by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith which you can now order through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

In the book the premise as outlined in a post by Chris is “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness, and who can translate that into some kind of business value”. Now I haven’t read the book yet but it is on my “to buy” list, however if I had been sent a copy to review under the new FTC guidelines I would have to disclose that I was given the book for the expressed purpose of writing said review.

It’s not like I couldn’t be trusted to make it clear to my readers that this was the case. It’s not like the reputation I have built up over the past four to five years of blogging would let me do otherwise. No as far as the FTC is concerned unlike David Pogue I would have to publicly declare in a satisfactory “in your face” way that I got the book for free. Interestingly enough every single book listed in the sidebar of David Pogue’s personal site uses an affiliate link – yet there is no disclosure of this anywhere.

One of the driving forces behind social media and people like Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, Jeff Jarvis or Penelope Trunk (and not always to her benefit) has been their honesty and their never-ending drive to build your trust in them and that their word is the most valuable thing to them.

Yet under the new FTC guidelines (pdf) this trust they have built up isn’t good enough. Sure the New York Times can publish plagiarized articles or just plain made up shit and yet when someone from traditional media does a review they are exempt from having to plaster a disclosure all over their articles.

In other words as far as the FTC is concerned just because you are a blogger you have to play by different rules.

The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. (page 47)

It doesn’t matter if you have years of building trust – one on one – behind you or that the 100 or 30,000 readers who read you every day have more faith in what you say over some newspaper journalist.

To the FTC you can’t be trusted. Period.

Being a Trust Agent just got a lot harder.

[Special] CobWEBs Daily Podcast: Anyone thinking the FTC blogger rules are a good thing are fuckwads

Category: Podcasts
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Posted 1327 days ago

Surprisingly today’s show is a little earlier than usual but that shouldn’t be too surprising since it has to do with the final publication from the FTC and their ham-fisted rulings regarding bloggers and disclosure. Today’s show would have been with Sean P. Aune and Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins but after listening in for a few minutes I couldn’t keep help from jumping in on the conversation as well.

Besides just talking about the new rulings we also talk about the reasoning behind such an incredibly boneheaded move and who is most likely to benefit from what really amounts to the smaller bloggers getting slammed by these draconian laws that apparently only apply to bloggers and not other forms of media who have lived off the largesse of freebies for as long as man has been publishing newsprint.

There is going to be a lot of discussion about this over the next while that is for sure and hopefully more than one lawsuit over the constitutionality of what the FTC is ramming down our throats.

In the meantime enjoy the show.

Maybe we should get the FTC to change our diapers as well

Category: Technology
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2 comments
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Posted 1431 days ago

FRANKENDIAPERCHANGE There’s been a lot of rah-rah’ing the past couple of days about how the FTC is going to start keep their eye on bloggers to make sure that we aren’t doing anything dishonest and misleading to our readers. The funny part about this is that myself, Sean P. Aune and Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins talked about this very thing a month ago. Not to mention the fact that Mark (as well as Brian Solis) wrote some posts examining this move by the FTC – so where have the rest of you hotshots been?

The not so funny part about all this is the fact that the majority of bloggers seem to be falling over themselves about how even though it’s a bad idea we probably need something like this. My question is – when did you bunch lose all your balls?