Norway has a new law requiring anyone being paid to post on social media to disclose if posts have been modified and how. Lawmakers want to reduce pressure put on people due to “idealised people in advertising”. I’m not sure if they are targeting influencers or the photoshopping industry.
The law says you must “mark retouched or otherwise manipulated advertising when this means that the person’s body in the advertisements deviates from reality in terms of body shape, size and skin.”
The requirements are an amendment to Norway’s Marketing Act. The King of Norway will decide when the act goes into effect. No matter how silly the idea of having a king might be to us, as Americans we must be gracious and considerate.
What’s the reaction?
Norway’s influencers seem to support the idea. That makes some sense. If they’re feeling pressure to look perfect in every single post. How many influencers are in Norway? There are only 5 million people there to begin with.
I doubt anything like this would have a chance in the United States. Even though they aren’t blocking any content, you could still make a pretty good case that it’s a violation of free speech to slap a label on content. Adding something to content is not all that different from blocking it.
Would something like this help with users’ self-esteem? Would you even notice it was there? The platform can do anything they want as far as I’m concerned. I’m not thrilled with a government deciding to do that. It’s not here in the US though, so my outrage is tempered. It will create some work for coders who have to come up with a way for this to show up in Norway.
I’m not much of an influencer, but you should totally sign up for my email newsletter. A law about photoshopping is just the sort of story you’d expect to find there.
