Board game reviewers and influencers are falling foul of FTC rules prohibiting 'unfair or deceptive' acts by failing to properly disclose when they receive free games - putting themselves and publishers in the firing line for court action.
Even though I agree that social media is a problem I don't think it is that hard to disclose relationships, free products or money received for content.
The guidelines aren't even that strict. So if creators fail to adhere it means they probably didn't even try or purposefully hide information.
There are influencers and sellers consciously working to evade any transparency. Made are trying to be just too cute with their ‘see what I have here’ posts.
The crafting social media communities are struggling with this too. /c/knitting has a new mod trying to establish rules and boundaries. Just as the community was starting to take off, the sellers and influencers started to be evident.
I saw someone ask on Mastodon if we are witnessing the next evolution of humanity; those who can be skeptical of the information they are presented with vs just agreeing with it because it tells them what they want to hear. The example was that a disproportionate number of conservatives died from just not believing information about covid from people who were smarter (at this specific subject) than they were.