The FTC released guidelines designed to crackdown on the blogger payolathe risible practice of paying people to write favorable things about your products or company. As the editor who runs the Reviews team here at PCMag.com, I thought it would be worth my time to wade through the 81-page guide of regulations. After all, the penalty could be $11,000 per violation. Near as I can tell, the regulation will require every blogger to disclose payments, gifts, and professional interests for every tweet, post, or email that supports a given company. In other words, this mess of regulations misunderstands media, creates unenforceable rules, and, quite possibly, violates our First Amendment right to free speech.

For starters, let me review how PCMag.com does business. Vendors loan us products to review. We test them. We send them back. That's pretty much it. Staff can't take cash or gifts of value from vendorsalthough you will be hard-pressed to find a staffer without at least a dozen 512MB USB keys filled with press releases and images. There is also a drawer full of T-shirts. Our advertising department has no say in what we write and neither do vendors. Sometimes companies are upset about what we write, but they know the deal going in.

PCMag has been in business for longer than I have, and I take lot of pride in working here. Truth be told, many of our competitors also have rigorous editorial standards. A lot of established blogs have standards that are just as high. For that matter, I know individual bloggers who are informed, scrupulous, and utterly enjoyable to read. So why is the FTC setting up different types of rules for PCMag, or indeed, why is it setting up rules at all?

The new rules extend far beyond bloggers. Facebook updates, Twitter posts, Tumblr photos, even word-of-mouth marketing can be now be regulated by the FTC. Like most people, I despise this type of covert marketing more than anything. But, at some point, I think we have to let people post, blog, tweet, and say what they want to one another. We can decide whether or not to believe them.

Part of my problem with the FTC is that it sees a line between blogs and traditional media that does not exist. According to these new FTC regulations, if some 20-year-old college kid convinces Microsoft's PR department to send him a copy of Halo: ODST for free and he writes a blog post saying how much he loved it, he has to disclose that he got the game for free or face a $11,000 penalty. Recently, PCMag got a copy of the and positively reviewed it (It got 3.5 stars). We don't have to say a thing about where we got the software. Why the difference? According to the regs:

"The Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages."

Well, bully for traditional mediawhatever that means these days. As an occasional blogger, frequent Twitterer, reluctant Facebooker, and full-time journalist, I wonder what set of rules the FTC would have me follow? Better still, what are the chances it COULD make me follow them?

Put aside the inconvenient fact that there are millions of bloggers in the world and hundreds of millions of social media users on Facebook posting new content every second. Let's assume the FTC can totally track all that and that the threat of an $11,000 fine scares everyone into line, even that @SexySingle334 spambot on Twitter. Let's say everyone wants to comply with these guidelines. Where are all these disclosures supposed to reside? If Dell pays someone to post something nice on Twitter, must the disclosure fit within the 140 character limit? Would they reside on the company's Web site?

The regulations also have a lot of weird provisions for celebrity endorsements. Near as I can tell, they say that Derek Jeter has to drive a Ford Edge, Tiger Woods has to wear Nike undershorts, and Kylie really, really has to like Windows 7. She also might be liable if "more happy isn't coming." I am only half kidding. Again, from the FTC document:

"A significant percentage of consumers are likely to believe the celebrity's statements represent his own views even though he is reading from a script. The celebrity is subject to liability for his statement about the product."

Unlike Kylie, who I hope has a good lawyer, we are not children. When we read something online, we decide whether to trust the source. We do the same thing when we watch broadcast TV, read established media web sites, and peruse the daily newspaper (those that are left anyway). If Law & Order's Sam Waterston tells me how much he loves TD Ameritrade, I will assume he is being paid for it. If I stumble on a particularly effusive review from an unknown blogger, I will take it for what it ispossibly authentic, possibly payola. What I don't see is the need for FTC intervention.

I don't doubt the FTC motives here. I am all for consumer protection and think disclosure is always the best policy. If the FTC wanted to do some good, it should wade into the morass that is the personal information business, a snake pit that consumers .

In those rare cases where an individual takes a payoff to postand we are mostly talking about individuals herethere are better remedies. We can decide for ourselves who to trust. We can shame companies that participate in pay for post schemes and stop buying their products. We can shun social media shills that fill our feeds with sponsored noise. Consumers already have the power.

And the FTC is trying to take some of it away.

Yes, there are rules to the media business. PCMag has been following them for years. You have to build trust with an audience, and you do it with honesty, transparency, and accuracy. These rules apply to old-school mags, new school web sites, and even aspiring social media luminaries. These rules determine success or failure.

These rules should not be made by the Federal Trade Commission.

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