omg i was so excited to read this news this mornin on AsiaOne (which, granted, has a truckload of spelling mistakes and is quite badly maintained – even worse than askcleo hahaha).
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Taiwan to fine bloggers for false advertising
AFP
Tuesday, Oct 25, 2011TAIPEI - Taiwan plans to fine bloggers who make false claims or exaggerate on behalf of products and companies as the number of consumer disputes soars, authorities said Tuesday.
Parliament on Monday started revising a law to make it possible to fine bloggers and other reviewers up to ten times the payment they receive for false advertising, said the Fair Trade Commission.
According to local media, some bloggers are paid up to Tw$70,000 (S$2,947) per review.
Often the reviews are disguised as innocent journal entries, while in fact they talk up products and services to lure customers.
One recent controversy involved a popular blogger with a daily average hit of 140,000 who fabricated photographs to exaggerate the effect of beauty products, local reports said.
Legal disputes involving Internet commentaries have been on the rise in recent years, mostly caused by negative rather than positive assessments.
Under a different law, a woman was recently ordered to pay a noodle shop Tw$200,000 for calling its food “really bad” on her blog.
FINALLY. some form of control for bloggers.
Once again I would like to reiterate my stance that bloggers are NOT accredited forms of media. Read my previous rant on this. They are forms of media, just not credible ones.
Yes, they are entitled to their own opinions and yes, they can amass a following. In fact, some of them are quite interesting.
I guess my pet peeve lies with those “beauty blogs” – some of them are just bloggers who jump on the bandwagon in anticipation of getting more freebies. Which girl will turn down bagloads of free makeup? not me for sure.
Now, i’ve been watching Drop Dead Diva recently, and boy, is it an awesome possum show! Laughs aside, it is so a smart show! From that, I’ve learned something about false advertising, and i definitely think that all these photoshop click-happy bloggers are falsely advertising about products.
Now, let’s hope they implement it in Singapore soon.
Posted on October 27, 2011
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