Tattle’s Law – End The Wild Wild West Of Social Media

Social media has revolutionized communication and has countless benefits. Unfortunately there are also lots of negative aspects on society and this largely unregulated industry that has slipped under the radar.

Tattle’s law speaks to protect members of the public, social media influencers and their children from these negative aspects:

Protect Social Media Influencers

There’s downsides of being a public figure and monetizing your private life. This is inevitable and once people start to overshare their private life online they will not be able to control the narrative.

It’s very difficult for social media influencers to see this objectively and they often falsely claim that anything other than praise (on other sites – not sent to them) that they have to go out of their way to read is trolling, harassment, bullying, and stalking.

We see it as vital that people are educated to understand that once they start selling their personal life they are a business and can’t be expected to be treated like an individual when it suits them.

Reality TV programmes now warn their contestants about the negative aspects of fame and we believe all embarking on social media as a business should be educated. Tattle’s law seeks to educate people before they are allowed to monetize their personal life so they understand the implications that come with fame and offering up their private life to the public for remuneration.

So many social media influencers a have very unrealistic expectations that they can control how others perceive them and education would be a valuable tool to combat this.

Tattles law would make it mandatory for governments to effectively regulate social media posts from influencers and for influencers to be held to account if they break the rules.

A Professional Influencer Organisation to Make Social Media Influencers Accountable and Effectively Regulate

Tattles law seeks to make it law that a professional influencers body is setup to benefit both members of the public and social media Influencers.

At the moment the advertising regulators are wholly unable to deal with the huge numbers of adverts consumers are given on social media. Influencers know this and that they can get away with misleading or not disclosing adverts so it’s very common to ignore the rules. This leads to rampant non disclosure for AD content on social media.

The rules on adverts are very simple – if there’s a business arrangement of any sort or if someone receives payment either by a something gifted or money it should clearly say AD right at the start. However many social media posts don’t adhere to the simple rule by either not saying AD at all, hiding AD at the end of a long description or the influencer hiding AD in a deceptive way in an image.

A professional body will effectively make influencers accountable for misleading people and will allow members of the public to report breaches in the rules that they know will be followed up. At the moment breaches of the rules are almost always ignored when reported to the regulators as they don’t have the capacity to deal with the huge volume.

This professional influencer body can be funded by social media influencers as many with a modest following are making more than medical professionals with years of qualifications and training.

Similar to many other professional bodies social media influencers can have a public identification number for their membership of the professional body so that brands only work with people that are a registered member. This will protect brands and give confidence that their organisation is only advertised in accordance with the law and there will be accountability if not.

Working with social media companies like Facebook/Instagram and YouTube it can be made mandatory for someone to be a member of the professional influencer body in order to monetize their social media.

Protect Members Of The Public

There are already rules in place for adverts but as they are so routinely flouted members of the public are often unaware when they are being sold to. There is little at the moment looking out for the mental health of consumers of social media and it’s negative impacts.

By making sure the rules are adhered to with effective regulation it will protect members of the public from dishonest and misleading adverts. Also if an individual does spot an advert that breaches the rules a professional organisation gives confidence that their complaint will be dealt with appropriately.

Protect Children from Being Monetized On Social Media

There’s a very strict set of rules concerning child actors and models. There’s next to no regulation of parents monetising their children on social media.

Children are indoctrinated by their own parents at a young age, whom they should trust, into seeing it normal to be used as a prop in adverts on social media.

Regulation is needed to tightly control this to protect minors.

Please sign below to end the wild wild west of social media to benefit society:

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