CASE. Influencers, scams and millions of views: how internet stars sold dreams that turned into nightmares

Glory, money, beauty… On social networks, promises are flowing, served by cheerful young people, endowed with an irresistible glibness. Having become stars on the internet, they film themselves all day long and post their colorful “story” on Instagram or Snapchat. Their job? Influencers, or content creators. They are followed by thousands of fans, aged 16 to 30, eager for advice in all areas: fashion, cosmetics, food, investing money or online betting.

Law void

For advertisers, these high-profile “2.0 prescribers” are the ideal “customers” to promote their product, talk about their brand, extol the virtues of a miracle cream, a pair of sneakers or a juicy financial investment. Behind the screens, it’s a bit of a “win-win”: influencers take care of their popularity rating, which easily exceeds the simple quarter of an hour of celebrity popularized in the late 60s by Andy Warhol, and on their side, advertisers are guaranteed very wide media exposure for their product, which is ideal for boosting sales.

But behind the beautiful promises of these dream sellers, beware of mirages and cascading disillusions. Especially since the influence marketing boom is taking advantage of a legal vacuum to thrive under the nose and beard of the legislator who is helpless in the face of the surge. Today, some stars of this flourishing market are accused of promoting a product without having either the required qualities or the legal authorizations.

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Social networks: 60% of influencers “targeted” by Fraud Control are “abnormal”

Recently, two collective complaints (88 joint complaints) were filed with the Paris prosecutor for “fraud and breach of trust”. They target the famous couple of influencers, Marc and Nadé Blata, followers of the promotion of financial products whose risky investments are at the origin, according to the complainants, of scams and colossal losses of money. According to M^e Alexandre Dakos, one of the lawyers for these injured investors quoted in “Le Monde”, the total damage is estimated at 6.3 million euros, with “thousands of investors having lost from a few hundred to 100,000 €” , in these projects.

One of these incriminated products offered to imitate the stock market operations of professional traders, via investment platforms, in the hope of enriching one’s portfolio (copytrading). Targeted by the complaints, the implicated couple living in Dubai pleads not guilty. This Thursday, the American social media giant, Meta, announced that it had closed the couple’s Instagram account, “as well as others with influencers”, under pressure from the victims’ aid collective.

“Misleading commercial practice”

In 2021, reality TV star Nabilla Benattia-Vergara, followed by thousands of subscribers, was also pinned down by the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF), for practices misleading commercials. She had been fined €20,000 after promoting stock products on Snapchat without disclosing that she was being paid to do so.

However, “the failure to indicate the advertising nature of its publication (by a logo or an oral or written mention for example) constitutes a misleading commercial practice against its subscribers, indicates the Repression of fraud, on its site. Of the sixty influencers targeted since 2021, 6 out of 10 did not comply with regulations on advertising and consumer rights.

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Influencers on social networks: the government wants a code of good conduct

Today, there are 150,000 influencers in France. Among them, 6% would earn more than €20,000 a year in this vast consumerist jungle. Hence the need to clarify the legal framework of the influence market in France by combating in particular misleading and illicit commercial practices. This is the subject of a bill signed by many deputies and tabled by the ecologist Aurélien Taché. It could be studied in April.