A code of good conduct for influencers, to prevent them from fooling their fans on the products they promote: this is the project of the French government, which announced on Sunday the opening until the end of January of a public consultation .
Controversies, sometimes followed by fines, regularly erupt on the practices of influencers, because they do not always reveal the relationships that bind them to certain brands. The Franco-Swiss starlet Nabilla Benattia-Vergara, for example, paid a fine of 20,000 euros for promoting stock market services on Snapchat in 2018 without mentioning that she was paid.
The Ministry of the Economy announced the principle of this public consultation on December 9, following a round table with representatives of this booming sector, which for its part pleads for self-regulation.
“A role in our daily life”
“Millions of you consult their opinions, their recommendations in the field of fashion, sport, beauty, travel. They therefore play a role in our daily lives. It gives them a special responsibility”, declared the Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire regarding the 150,000 influencers in France.
“The vast majority of them obviously respect the rules. But there are also certain scams or sometimes quite simply certain oversights. We forget to say that we have been paid to recommend such a product, such a site or such a trip”, he added in a video posted on the consultation site.
“Gaps, breaches and sometimes cheating”
“It is these discrepancies, these shortcomings, sometimes this cheating that we want to correct with the regulation of this sector”, he continued, referring to his desire to put in place a “code of good conduct”.
The consultation, accessible until January 31, “will allow all French people who wish to express themselves on eleven measures divided into four themes”, he specified: the rights and obligations of influencers, intellectual property, consumer protection and sector governance.
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