"Lastly, I'll close with this: if you're really worried about the rule consider this: How in the world is the FTC going to police the millions of blogs out there?"

This is, to me, what makes this regulation stupid. It's virtually unenforceable. My guess is that they are largely going to rely on people reporting bloggers who don't disclose, because how else are they going to find violators?

I have a blog where I write (fairly inane, probably) reviews of restaurants, stores, attractions, etc. that I've visited. I've always paid to go to these places, and I'm reviewing them because I went there. No one would ever pay me to blog favorably; I just don't have enough followers to make it worth the cost. But now I've added a statement to one of my pages saying that I don't receive any kind of payment, and that exceptions will be disclosed.

Which I would have done, anyhow. If a restaurant comps my dessert because I got bad service, I'd write about that as part of the overall experience. But there's no reason for anyone to comp me anything simply because I'm a blogger. There are just too many of us.

I'm not necessarily opposed to the principle, that is, there should be more transparency about which endorsements are paid for and which are uncompensated (and thus more genuine). However, I am concerned about the burden of compliance this is going to put on bloggers and other social media users:

1. How are affiliate links treated? Many people write "unpaid" reviews on their blogs, but include an affiliate link to the product (like a book review with an affiliate link to Amazon). If someone follows the link and buys the product, the blogger has now been paid for the endorsement. Does the affiliate ID code in the link URL constitute sufficient notification to readers (because savvy readers can mouse over links and tell if they're affiliate links) or does the blogger have to explicitly state each time that it is an affiliate link? Given that there are now widgets and plugins that automatically convert book, music, etc. mentions to affiliate links for you without the blogger having to do any extra work, many bloggers may not remember to add the disclaimer every time. Are they breaking the law?

2. Do bloggers have to go through all their archives and add disclosure to all their old posts with paid endorsements, free products, affiliate links, etc.? This would be a HUGE chore. Also, even if the rule is just to apply to posts published from the date of the ruling forward, we all know how easy it is to back- or forward-date a post, so who's to say when any post was REALLY published?

3. How do you fit both a recommendation and a disclosure into a 140-character tweet?

Maybe as a society we should just change our assumptions? Perhaps our default assumption should be that all endorsements are paid endorsements unless the reviewer states that they were NOT compensated. Then instead of prosecuting people for committing lies of omission (forgetting or not knowing that they have to explicitly disclose when they've been compensated for a review) we only prosecute people for lies of commission (claiming that you were not paid when you really were).

Everyone knows that lying is wrong and almost everyone understands that you can get into trouble for lying about something related to money, but not everyone knows (or should be expected to know) the laws requiring disclosure about paid endorsements in publications or broadcasts. Most people don't even realize that their personal blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. is covered by the many of the same rules covering newspapers and TV channels. Now that technology has put the power to publish/broadcast into the hands of ordinary people, perhaps we should consider revising our expectations of publishers/broadcasters to be more in line with what ordinary people can reasonably be expected to understand and comply with.

(Also posted on my blog: http://jacquelinegetshergeekon.com/my-concerns-about-the-recent-ftc-ruli...)