California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill imposing criminal and civil penalties on content creators who fail to disclose paid political advertisements, a measure aimed at bringing greater transparency to the growing use of influencer marketing in politics.<\/p>\n
The bill, AB1130, was signed into law Saturday as part of a series of new measures that Newsom\u2019s office said are aimed to \u201cprotect elections in California from interference and political meddling.\u201d <\/p>\n
Though existing laws required someone to disclose whether they were being paid to post, there was no liability provision that officials could use to enforce the rule. Now, authorities will be allowed to impose penalties under the Political Reform Act of 1974 that can include a misdemeanor charge, according to the law\u2019s text<\/a>.<\/p>\n Influencers are playing a growing role<\/a> in political campaigns, as candidates and political groups seek to reach people who increasingly turn to social media<\/a> for news and information. Some creators are paid by campaigns or outside groups to produce political content, while others post about candidates and issues without compensation.<\/p>\n Assembly member Marc Berman, who proposed the legislation, said the growing influencer industry has \u201cchanged the way candidates communicate with voters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs more candidates pay influencers to post content supporting their campaigns, it is imperative that voters have the right to know whether or not that content is organic and authentic or paid political messaging,\u201d Berman said in a statement last month, <\/a>as the bill was headed to the governor\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n The issue came to the forefront earlier this year during billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer\u2019s more than $200 million campaign for California governor, which he lost<\/a>.<\/p>\n Steyer\u2019s campaign paid social media influencers to post favorable content about him, but many of the posts did not disclose that the creators had been paid, according to a May report by the Los Angeles Times.<\/a><\/p>\n The undisclosed posts prompted a complaint to California\u2019s Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that the campaign had violated the state\u2019s disclosure requirements for paid political content.<\/p>\n A campaign spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times that all the rules were followed in hiring content creators, describing the complaint as \u201cbaseless.\u201d The case involving the complaint remains open, according to the commission\u2019s website.<\/p>\n Researchers at the Information Integrity Institute at the University of Tennessee\u2019s College of Communication and Information published a report last month<\/a> in which they examined what transparency measures social media users in the U.S. want from paid political influencers.<\/p>\n Their study, in which they surveyed about 1,000 U.S. social media users through the platform Prolific, found that \u201cparticipants who placed a greater value on authenticity were also more likely to support disclosure when political content was paid for.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the more real problems is not just you see something that\u2019s completely false or you see something that\u2019s completely true, but you see inauthentic or misleading propagandist-type opinions pushing people\u2019s perspectives in different directions,\u201d associate professor Benjamin Horne said in a blog post about the findings.<\/a><\/p>\n The institute\u2019s director, Catherine Luther, added that she believes \u201cany movement towards transparency in online information is a good thing. I think it can only be beneficial for democratic societies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill imposing criminal and civil penalties on content creators who fail to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-470709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}