The French Government refines the details on the law that curbs the excesses of influencers and regulates the commercial activity they carry out. The bill is now being debated in Parliament and includes measures such as the creation of a surveillance brigade, the prohibition that they advertise certain products (aesthetic medicine or cryptocurrencies), or the obligation to say if they use beautification filters. In addition, the names of the “bad influencers” will be published, that is, those who have been found to break the rules and have carried out deceptive practices.
The Government thus wants to protect the consumer and fight against bad practices and scams, and also cover the legal vacuum that existed in the commercial activity carried out by these people.
The National Assembly has already approved the law and this week it will be voted on in the Senate. The Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, has revealed that the names of non-compliant influencers will be published. As he explained, in the first quarter of this year, checks were carried out on 50 people and irregularities were found in about thirty.
None “was transparent with the commercial nature of their actions or with the identity of the brands” behind them, the minister told France Info.
The surveillance brigade that is in charge of supervising these behaviors is made up of 15 agents. Violations are punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of 300,000 euros.
Another of the measures, in this case included in a behavior guide, is the obligation for influencers to communicate if they are using beautification filters. The objective is to “limit the destructive psychological effects” in the youngest.
According to the Ministry of the Economy, in France there are some 150,000 influencers and content creators (although the criteria for defining them are not very clear), although 44% have between 1,000 and 5,000 followers, who are considered an average influencer. The stars (with more than a million) can get to charge large sums for a publication or a story on a social network.
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