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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

>Anything less is obviously intending to deceive

I wholeheartedly disagree. What about the case where the person involved actually loves the product and wanted to talk about it anyway? This is frequently the case with gamers, models that prefer certain makeup, etc. What's worth doing is worth getting paid for, but that doesn't necessarily mean they "intend to deceive" - in fact it's the exact opposite. It's an honest endorsement.

IMO, it should only be required to be labeled as an ad if the post wouldn't have been made unless the brand paid for it.

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But you can still label it with that specificity--I've seen Internet celebrities close videos with "Yes, I really do love this product, but I am also getting paid for this." Transparency about when money is being transferred is important.

I disagree that it is important to know that they were paid if they genuinely like the product. Any hint of it being advertising immediately discredits the content, and there is no need for that to happen in the case of a genuine endorsement.

Sure, in the perfect world, we'd fire up the intent detector and know. In the real world, everyone would claim 'Oh, but I do love the product.' and the end result is it's unregulated and people get tricked.

It's still not the same, though: I genuinely like a ton of products, but most of them I wouldn't actively promote if I weren't being paid to do so. There's still a difference between someone off-the-cuff mentioning/plugging a particular product they like, vs. someone being paid to do so, even for a product the use and like regardless of the payment.

But why do you think that any hint of being advertising discredits the content? Surely if there's reason to think that, you'd want to know if content is discreditable? Or do you just think that the masses will mistakenly discredit content if they know money was exchanged?

If it's a genuine endorsement then money wouldn't be changing hands.

That isn't remotely close to being true in all cases.

I disagree.

When a company pays a person to endorse a product then it's in the person's best interests not to search for (or promote) a better alternative.

It's great if they would use and promote the product anyway, but it's naive to think getting paid hasn't influenced them in any way.

that's what they said the solution is, isn't it?

> ... then get someone to actually like your product(, and then it won't matter that they disclose it)

Yes, but he's still saying that should be labeled as an ad just because the person got paid for it. That's what I disagree with. The only test should be "would the user be seeing this if the poster wasn't paid?"

How could you ever answer that test with any reliability? Any hypothetical is going to be irrevocably tainted by the money.

The law is full of such extremely subjective tests.

I give examples of exactly that - and those people state clearly it's an advert. I then judge how much I trust those people with that knowledge. The difference is that I get to choose, with all the knowledge at my disposal.

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