As I suggested recently in an editorial I wrote for Talent Zoo, astroturfing (the act of faking a grassroots campaign or consumer endorsement), is not only unethical, but increasingly, illegal, and more legislation is certain to come. We didn’t have to wait long. Action News 36 WTVQ, in Lexington, KY, reports:

“Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal. The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.”

The European Union’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (PDF), enacted in May, 2005, already bars companies from “falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer” which could certainly seem to cover astroturfing and other social media sins.

The report also notes Couch quite astutely admits enforcement of such a law is difficult. Remember all of the promising legislation banning spam?

Tags: astroturfing, european union, representative tim couch, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive

Rayanne Langdon, Miranda McCurlie and Megan Ramsay, my good, good friends at Centennial College in Toronto, published a podcast interview with me on Utterz.

The production values are great, especially given the way we produced this. I recorded a series of Utterz (short audio posts), and the girls, standouts in Gary Schlee’s ground breaking Online PR program, stitched the whole thing together and added some cool music. I did get a little defensive about the “what makes you a social media expert?” question, and I’m up on my soapbox about social media ethics, Twitter and microblogging.

Tags: Gary Schlee, Megan Ramsay, Microblogging, Miranda McCurlie, podcast, Rayanne Langdon, social media ethics, Socialized, twitter, utterz

My March Talent Zoo column — in which I suggest social media is not really to blame for the rash of astroturfing and other deceptions committed by corporate America — was published today. Rather, the wave of social media-based deceipt continues simply because some people are slime.

“Some in our profession claim to be confused about the rules for using blogs and other social media in marketing and public relations. ‘This is unfamiliar territory. We’re on the frontier of communications. The rules are being written as we speak.’ Bullshit. New media does not require new morality. Most of us know right from wrong, and just because we’re using a blog or an online forum doesn’t release us from our responsibility for ethical behavior.”

Read more…

Tags: ethics, social media, astroturfing, edelman, wal-mart, target, whole foods, john mackey