[suladesign]

Actually, in Germany, there are state institutions who check out people's blogs, Instagram, etc. to make sure product placement in any post is correctly labelled as advertisement.

Every blog, facebook, instagram, twitter account, etc. needs to provide a real name with the true address etc. This is required since May 2018, and that's how they can find you and sue you. And they do. There's at least one institution that does only that: check people's posts to see if they're doing things properly.

There are precedence lawsuits against bloggers and posters, and most times these people lose their cases because the courts judge strictly. Even bloggers/posters who bought products themselves and posted about them simply because they liked them (no monetary or other compensation by the company, and no official cooperation with any company) have been sued when they failed to correctly label their posts as advertisement. And if you're posting anything anywhere you know how easy it is to mention a product you like simply because you like it. The same is true for youtube videos.

Legal advisers now recommend to correctly label product placement whenever it happens, simply because - even if said state institution doesn't find you, maybe other people/companies who are jealous of you sneaking in advertisement without acknowledging it - could sue you. And we all know there are those kinds of people out there. I was just reading up on all that because thus far I'd simply ignored things. But hearing how other people get sued just for blogging/posting about stuff they're interested in is kind of scary now. You're just this simple person and suddenly you become a target of law enforcement!

There are a good number of people who took their blogs offline because of the risks and their lack in legal knowledge about such things. But digital scrapbooking is such a niche, I couldn't find anything on it, yet. I guess the fact that I credit the designers and kit/product name for each layout whenever I post things makes it advertisement. No?

And then I don't even know if I have to go back to past posts to edit them (and my blog goes all the way back to 2010) and I've always done a lot on digital scrapbooking ... Does that mean I have to take down my blog, because there's no way I'd find the time to go back and correctly label every single post? Ack, it's such a mess!

I'd be happy to know if other people around the world have similar laws now and how they deal with it. I know the German laws come from European bills that have been passed.

And no, it's not a good idea to simply ignore this and hope you won't get caught. I have CT layouts that I receive compensation for (free kit), even though I rarely show the actual kit. Simply ignoring this, you can quickly find yourself in deep water ...