Popular bloggers slapped for corporate kickbacks

By Kang Seung-woo

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Sunday that it had sanctioned 47 bloggers and Internet cafe operators for taking cash from companies and failing to comply with consumer protection regulations.

The nation’s antitrust watchdog said that seven popular bloggers, so-called “power” bloggers, took commissions from advertisers in return for organizing group purchases without disclosing this to consumers. It fined four of them, who took cash regularly, 200 million won ($176,800).

“If bloggers write favorable product reviews and promote group purchases after receiving cash from advertisers, a number of consumers who joined the collective bargaining in the belief that the blog or cafe were not profit-seeking may have suffered losses from distorted and sponsored information on products,” said an official at the FTC.

In July this year, the FTC, headed by Chairman Kim Dong-soo, announced that local online users, including power bloggers who post products reviews in reward for benefits, will have to disclose their links with advertisers from July 14 in an action to protect consumers from unfair online transactions.

In an era of social networking, many companies cannot ignore the influence of power bloggers. They sometimes use their blogs as a place for group purchases and the bloggers are paid in accordance with the number of products sold.

Earlier this year, a female power blogger came under public fire, after she allegedly received $200,000 for selling $1 million worth of defective ozone-sterilizing washers through her blog.

In a related move, the FTC ordered 40 Internet cafe- and blog-styled shopping malls to make corrections due to their failure to comply with consumer protection regulations.

The FTC said that commercial transactions via an Internet cafe or blog on Internet portal sites require protective measures, so it plans to lay down guidelines for portal sites and users.

According to the FTC, the nation’s leading portals, Naver and Daum, have 7.8 million and 8.5 million Internet cafes, respectively, and 786 and 449 power bloggers.