PayPerPost – disclosure my backside

TechCrunch has an article today about a new service from PayPerPost called "DisclosurePolicy.org." A snippet from the DP site says:

“provides policy creation tools, best practices and forums for discussing the delicate balance between content creator freedoms and audience transparency expectations.”

Michael mentions the following:

While that sounds like a fine idea, PayPerPost bloggers should also be disclosing the fact that they are being paid for their post prominently within the post, not on some separate page in their blog.

note: I will be covering ad:tech next week and the PayPerPost team will be there, I am going to try to get a live interview with them.

And I completely agree with him. Ashish makes a great point as well about how PPP posts are basically advertisements. I know when I read them I treat them as such. Whenever an "organization" is sponsored by big business, it certainly changes the attitudes of the representatives.

Michael mentions tobacco and it is a great comparison. PPP probably believes by throwing it on a .org site, they legitimize what they are doing. Oh well. The sad part is that the masses don't understand these issues and will just read a PPP post as legit, when clearly it is biased. And that bias is different than any other bias. On the positive side, DP is getting us all talking about the issue more. And that is a good thing.

What does disclosure get you? It gets you trust and honesty rating points. And on a blog those trust rating points help move you up the ladder of importance. When people can't trust your posts, you will go back down the ladder even quicker than you went up it.

But if you look at the Web as a whole, this does not happen often. For example you have sites which will sell your e-mail address to the world. On their forms for user signup, you don't see them posting a message that they will sell your email to the devil. They (if anything) have a link to their privacy policy or user policy. Maybe this is the first step.

Look at infomercials – they pay people to appear, do you think anyone will say that knife or power chopper or ab burner was crap and didn't work – show me just one? And you see disclaimers that are in tiny type and don't really say how the person used the product or what they started with. A man comes on and says he made $500k the first year, but what he doesn't tell you is that it cost him $2 million to make that $500k.

When we pay people for reviews or posts, we are doing a disservice to the public at large. If you look at a service like Reevoo, it only accepts reviews from people who have purchased the product. If you compare that to say Amazon, where anyone can post, including the company, you get biased reviews.

And of course, when advertisers appear on a site, would that blogger ever bash that company? Hmm, makes ya wonder. I know for me, I would/have always done the right thing before money. I turned down a huge ad deal on one of my sites because they wanted to link to scum adsense sites. Even though it may mean I have no money this month, what can I do.

And then, do we look the other way when an advertiser is on our site but providing crap for service. So bash those that don’t advertise, look the other way for those who do?

I had a discussion with Jeremiah about an ethics post on his blog. He had a great comment as well from Martin:

I called Martin last night, he pretty much nailed it, when one starts to impact business decisions by using social media to talk about a product and is benefiting in a financial or other manner disclosure is mandatory.

I agree with Jeremiah and Michael. When someone gives you compensation for a post, you must disclose it within the post. And the key is ANY KIND OF COMPENSATION. Not just cash. But where is the line drawn? That is where the questioning will begin. I know in the business world, anything over $25 typically must either not be accepted or must be disclosed. $25 is probably too high in the blog space though. So if a company sends me a tshirt, is that compensation?

I want to see real debates about ethics. I want to see everyone involved who wants to be not just the big players deciding what should be done to get to their best interests. Let's get talking.