fj206516@ohio.edu
The year is 2018, and advertising has come a long way from the print and newspaper ads our parents grew up with. Ads have become so intertwined with modern day media that it is often difficult to tell the difference between what is paid versus what is earned. On the MTV show Catfish, the hosts investigate people who create fake online profiles. With recent technological advances and the rise of social media, it seems that more companies are resorting to their own ways of "catfishing" the general public. Through methods like astroturfing and social media influencing, some companies are using covert methods to get the public to support their causes and products. The question is, how can the public tell the difference?
Within the past 5 years, The Federal Trade Commission imposed regulations for advertising on social media. The organization asks that if you are posting something sponsored, you put "#ad" or "#sponsored" in the post so that viewers know you were paid to post it. At first, their regulations were mainly targeted toward celebrities who would post sponsored content, but now they are also starting to crack down on micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are every day Instagram users who are paid by companies to post product reviews and essentially advertise on behalf of companies. With more and more people starting to advertise for companies via social media, I can only imagine that it's becoming harder for the FTC to control.
"Astroturfing" is another way that companies are catfishing the public. Companies are now able to create hundreds of fake social media profiles that look real, to create the idea that many people are supporting a grassroots movement. In reality, there are just thousands of bot accounts floating around on social media. The accounts are realistic enough that it's difficult to distinguish them from normal people. Scary, right? Companies use this tactic to lobby for their own interests. The fake accounts appear to be supporting causes that seem beneficial for every-day people, but often the causes will benefit a large corporation. I think that the FTC should find a way to regulate this because it can be very deceiving to people. If they knew who was behind these "grassroots movements," they could think, vote and make purchases differently.
According to a study from 2016, millennials check their phones 150 times a day. When it's this difficult to tell which content is sponsored or fake, who knows how much paid content a person unknowingly looks at in one day.
Within the past 5 years, The Federal Trade Commission imposed regulations for advertising on social media. The organization asks that if you are posting something sponsored, you put "#ad" or "#sponsored" in the post so that viewers know you were paid to post it. At first, their regulations were mainly targeted toward celebrities who would post sponsored content, but now they are also starting to crack down on micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are every day Instagram users who are paid by companies to post product reviews and essentially advertise on behalf of companies. With more and more people starting to advertise for companies via social media, I can only imagine that it's becoming harder for the FTC to control.
"Astroturfing" is another way that companies are catfishing the public. Companies are now able to create hundreds of fake social media profiles that look real, to create the idea that many people are supporting a grassroots movement. In reality, there are just thousands of bot accounts floating around on social media. The accounts are realistic enough that it's difficult to distinguish them from normal people. Scary, right? Companies use this tactic to lobby for their own interests. The fake accounts appear to be supporting causes that seem beneficial for every-day people, but often the causes will benefit a large corporation. I think that the FTC should find a way to regulate this because it can be very deceiving to people. If they knew who was behind these "grassroots movements," they could think, vote and make purchases differently.
According to a study from 2016, millennials check their phones 150 times a day. When it's this difficult to tell which content is sponsored or fake, who knows how much paid content a person unknowingly looks at in one day.
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