Transparency for Instagram

INSTAGRAM has helped nourish a crop of internet celebrities popular for their lifestyle photographs – and rich thanks to their sponsors. Now the mobile app is giving them a better way to disclose when they’re being paid, aiming to increase transparency.

The company will let users who work with sponsors decide to tag a brand within their posts. If the brand confir ms the relationship, the post will be marked as an ad with a “paid partnership” tag at the top. The product is being tested now with a handful of businesses and celebrities, and will be rolled out more widely if successful, the company said. Facebook, which owns Instagram, uses a similar disclosure system on its main social network.

“Our goal is to get a ton of feedback,” said Charles Porch, head of global creative programmes at Instagram. “It’s all about transparency within the community.”

The move follows months of uncertainty and criticism from the US Federal Trade Commission, which sent out a warning letter to dozens of so-called Instagram influencers earlier this year saying that disclosure practices weren’t making it clear when a company was paying them to peddle a product. Influencers are supposed to signal when they are being paid via hashtags on their posts that say #ad or #sponsored, but many use less-obvious tags like #sp – or simply fail to note the relationship at all out of concern they’ll appear inauthentic.

Last year, Warner settled with the FTC over a charge it paid video-game influencers thousands of dollars to spread positive reviews of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, without disclosure. Department store Lord & Taylor also settled after paying 50 fashion influencers to wear the same paisley dress in their posts, without noting they were paid. – Bloomberg