PayPerPost subscribers now required to disclose payment information

PayPerPost has released their new policy which now requires their subscribed bloggers to disclose that they are accepting payment to write posts about a particular product or service.

Until now, it was optional for the bloggers to disclose whether a particular post was paid for or not.

The company has been forced to update their policy amid criticism and a regulatory threat. Ted Murphy, PayPerPost’s chief executive spoke on this new development: “Ever since we launched, there’s been a lot of controversy about disclosure.”

The Federal Trade Commission in the US had said in a staff opinion that failure to disclose could, in some cases, violate consumer-protection laws on deception. They have however not clarified that they would be launching an investigation on this service.

David Sifry, founder of the blog search site Technorati spoke on this new policy introduced by the company: “Overall, this is an encouraging and long-awaited change. I think that people have learned that without trust, all posts become suspect. … By encouraging honesty and transparency in sponsored posts, PayPerPost adds (some) clarity to the waters they muddied when they launched six months ago.”