ACCC Crackdown and Influencer Economy

ACCC Australia interviewed by Sky news and Abc had mentioned that this year was the first time where influencers are enforced to disclose sponsorship.

Part 2/4

In line with completing the 2025 ACCC’s Digital Platform Services Inquiry, this year in 2023 for the first time ACCC enforced the policy to be followed by influencers in Australia. A Sky News Interview with ACCC commissioner Gina Gotlieb reveals that ACCC sweeps identify 81% of influencer posts are prone to potentially misleading endorsement and testimonials. In Australia influencers must disclose the information through obvious terms and if they fail to do so, since October 2022 the government has ruled out fines for individuals up to 2.5 million dollars per contravention. Sam Kelly, Director Manager of influencer agency ‘Hello Social’ interviewed by ABC Radio mentioned that there are concerns over authenticity from the perspective of influencers and acknowledges the need of governance for and from influencers in Australia.

That said let’s find out why the influencers are afraid of disclosing sponsorship and the type of governance and rights that creators have

Instafame and Authenticity

Social media has enabled influencers to pursue what Fairchild mentioned as “attention economy”, where some-ones’ value is assigned to their ability of attracting ‘eyeballs’ in an information rich world (Marwick 2015:138). In the context of micro- celebrity, the Insta-famous commonly align themselves with the conventional tropes of celebrity, they are good-looking and work in a ‘cool industry’ such as the modelling and tattoo industry (Marwick 2015:139). It is then unsurprising when the news that breaks out mentions how over 150 ACCC tip-offs mostly received complaints from consumers about creators in the field of fashion industry,lifestyle, and fitness. As they were held by their authentic persona, micro-celebrities are expected to maintain a greater standard of accountability. When it comes to sponsorships influencers are required to mention them clearly as the audience expects that their content should be produced for their best interest instead of the sponsors’ (Cunningham and Craig 2023:265), however when they fail to do so they endanger themselves to be viewed as inauthentic and that might ruin their career (Marwick 2013:119–121). Influencers are expected to only endorse products that they genuinely believe in and to not deceive their fans by being a sell-out to brands (Duffy and Wissinger 2017: 4660). They need to keep a precarious balance between being authentic enough so that people are interested in them and any products they might advertise while having to police the amount of obvious advertising they do. Influencers interviewed by Duffy mentioned 10%-20% would be the ideal, influencers are also recommended to not share so much of their true selves that less marketable things like their alcohol consumption or sex life come to light which might scare off viewers, employers, clients or advertisers or generate an uncomfortable amount of hate towards them(Duffy and Hund 2019:4983–4997).

Influencers’ hesitancy to abide by these rulings are then easy to understand; as a fashion blogger you would make your clothing be as stylish as you want to, however fans cannot distinguish between which items you genuinely purchased or which one is sponsored. If in the past they failed to disclose whether it’s an actual attempt to deceive or a genuine forgetfulness and only follow it after the enforcement, these influencers are risking their perceived authenticity. In the online attention economy, views are equal to success whereas clicks represent their online status (Marwick 2015:146–157).

Creators rights and Governance

The online creative economy as other big industries are bound to encounter problems, to deal with them a standardised governance whether organic or mandatory, as mentioned by Sam Kelly, is a necessity for the influencer economy to flourish and its agencies encourage influencers to get educated by attending seminars to fill the gap of knowledge of the importance of disclosing sponsored contents. In terms of creators rights and governance this is then explained by scholars through two models of power by Foucaults which are top-down and bottom up (Cunningham and Craig 2023:271–285).

Top-down governance means that state agencies exercise power over creators through direct regulation or policy “guidance” (Cunningham and Craig 2023:274–279). A clear example is provided by FTC in the USA where they have created guidelines that demand online creators to be transparent about branded content that aligned with our case of ACCC tips off.

Bottom-up, portrays how creators advocate for participation in a culture in which they can act collectively in the hope of improving their prospects as represented by the case of YouTubers Unionisation in Germany in 2019 where they joined forces with one of the biggest traditional labour unions in the world to launch a campaign to pressure the platform to enter into industrial negotiations (Cunningham and Craig 2023:279–285). Mentioned by Kelly, the ‘Australian Influencer Marketing Council’ hopes to self-regulate to protect and grow the space by forming a code of practice for influencers to follow. In the same interview he mentioned brands that offer sponsorship ought to educate influencers to do the right thing .

It has to be highlighted that platforms as intermediaries between government and influencers also bear responsibility to make guidelines specific to sponsored content and to enforce it. In 2017, Youtubers that were deemed as having unsafe content that was unsuitable to advertisers found themselves in “adpocalypse” where advertisers threatened Youtube to make the platform as advertiser friendly as possible so Youtube algorithmically decides which content is safe or not, this action had taken place in a sudden manner and caused a loss of revenue to major politically themed channels. In order to not only to force it on influencers, in my opinion ACCC have to also approach platforms and work together to assess their platform affordability and algorithmic transparency.

REFERENCE

Literature

Cunningham, Stuart, Craig, David and Baym, Nancy K (2021) Creator Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Duffy, Brooke Erin and Hund, Emily (2019) “Gendered Visibility on Social Media: Navigating Instagram’s Authenticity Bind,” International journal of communication (Online), p. 4983.

Duffy, Brookeerin and Wissinger, Elizabeth (2017) “Mythologies of Creative Work in the Social Media Age: Fun, Free, and ‘Just Being Me,’” International journal of communication (Online), p. 4652.

Marwick, Alice E. (2015) “Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy,” Public culture, 27(1), pp. 137–160.

Marwick, Alice E. (2013) “The Fabulous Lives of Micro-celebrities”,”Status update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the social media age, pp. 112–162.

News source

Courtney G (29 April 2023) ‘Social media influencers misleading Australians fresh report finds’, Sky News, accessed 30 April 2023. https://www.skynews.com.au/breaking-news/social-media-influencers-misleading-australians-fresh-report-finds/news-story/a3b37f183d4faee23925707f74d23c2a

Daniel K (27 January 2023) ‘Influencer crackdown in full swing as ACCC sweeps social media for hidden ads, undeclared sponsored posts’, abc news, accessed 20 March 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-27/accc-sweep-of-social-media-influencer-content/101898576

Kimberly B (27 January 2023) ‘AUDIO: Influencers crackdown in full swing as ACCC sweeps social media’, abc news radio, accessed 20 March 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-27/influencer-crackdown-in-full-swing-as-accc-sweeps/101900326#top

Shari H (20 January 2023) ‘Influencers on notice as consumer watchdog sets sights on undisclosed ads on social media’, abc news, accessed 20 March 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-20/social-media-influencers-on-notice-as-accc-targets-hidden-ads/101872506

Skynews.com (27 January 2023) ‘ACCC chair received 150 tip offs about dishonest social media influencers, Sky News, accessed 30 April 2023. https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/trending/accc-chair-received-150-tipoffs-about-dishonest-social-media-influencers/video/248c094d67bf4f0235be76e5097156f4

Yashee S (28 April 2023) ‘ACCC report finds social media influencers misleading Australians by pretending to be real ordinary people’, Sky News, accessed 30 April 2023. https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/accc-report-finds-social-media-influencers-misleading-australians-by-pretending-to-be-real-ordinary-people/news-story/af5cd2a48e2a4ea609ddabc61c379e69