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Article: PewDiePie and other YouTubers took money from Warner Bros. for positive game reviews
Inadequate disclosure on sponsored videos
The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Warner Bros. over claims that the publisher failed to disclose that it had paid prominent YouTubers for positive coverage of one of its video games. The FTC charge stated that Warner Bros. deceived customers by paying thousands of dollars to social media "influencers," including YouTube megastar PewDiePie, to cover Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor without announcing that money had changed hands.
Under the terms of the agreement, Warner Bros. is banned from failing to disclose similar deals in the future, and cannot pretend that sponsored videos and articles are actually the work of independent producers. "Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches," director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection Jessica Rich said in a statement. "Companies like Warner Brothers need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns."
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I'm on my phone so I can't really go into too much depth, but I can't say that I'm surprised that people with no real training or oversight got themselves involved in this sort of thing. I am, however, very surprised that Warner Brothers did this. I don't know why they thought that they could get away with this, TBH, but here we are.
In any case, I can understand why the FTC would go after Warner rather than the YouTubers in question. They're a big target, there's no real question of jurisdiction, and it takes two to tango so to speak so you may as well go after a single target.