The government wants to regulate the “cheating” which pushes influencers to fool their fans on the products they promote.
A code of good conduct for influencers, to prevent them from fooling their fans about the products they promote: this is the government’s project, which announced on Sunday the opening of a public consultation until the end of January. Controversies, sometimes followed by fines, regularly erupt over the practices of influencers who do not always reveal the relationships that bind them to certain brands. Influencer Nabilla Benattia-Vergara, for example, paid a fine of 20,000 euros for promoting stock market services on Snapchat in 2018 without mentioning that she was paid for it.
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The Ministry of the Economy announced the principle of this public consultation on December 9, following a round table with representatives of this booming sector, which for its part pleads for self-regulation. “You are millions to consult their opinions, their recommendations in the field of fashion, sport, beauty, travel. They therefore play a role in our daily lives. It gives them a special responsibility“, declared the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, about the 150,000 influencers in France.
Consultation until January 31
«The vast majority of them obviously respect the rules. But there are also certain scams or sometimes simply certain oversights. We forget to say that we have been paid to recommend such a product, such a site or such a trip“, he added in a video published on the site of the consultation. “It is these discrepancies, these shortcomings, sometimes these cheatings that we want to correct with the regulation of this sector.“, he continued, referring to his desire to put in place a “code of good conduct”.
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The consultation, accessible until January 31 on concertation-influenceurs.make.org, “will allow all French people who so wish to express themselves on 11 measures divided into four themes“, he specified: the rights and obligations of influencers, intellectual property, consumer protection and governance of the sector.