Taiwan to fine bloggers for false advertising

AFP News

25 October 2011 at 6:26 am

Taiwan plans to fine bloggers who make false claims or exaggerate on behalf of products and companies as the number of consumer disputes soars, authorities said on Tuesday. Parliament on Monday started revising a law to make it possible to fine bloggers and other reviewers up to ten times the payment they receive for false advertising, said the Fair Trade Commission. According to local media, some bloggers are paid up to Tw$70,000 ($2,300) per review. Often the reviews are disguised as innocent journal entries, while in fact they talk up products and services to lure customers. One recent controversy involved a popular blogger with a daily average hit of 140,000 who fabricated photographs to exaggerate the effect of beauty products, local reports said. Legal disputes involving Internet commentaries have been on the rise in recent years, mostly caused by negative rather than positive assessments. Under a different law, a woman was recently ordered to pay a noodle shop Tw$200,000 for calling its food "really bad" on her blog.

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