The CNMC (National Commission on Markets and Competition) has proposed regulating the activity of influencers in the draft General Law on Audiovisual Communications.
The CNMC regulates the business activity and competition of companies and freelancers
The regulator’s position is based on the fact that “the consolidation of these new agents operating on the Internet requires an updated legal framework that allows a balance to be struck between access to online content services, consumer protection and competition”.
It is assumed that social prescribers do generational work Content sponsored by advertising companies with the aim of commercial messages reaching a large audience, but they usually do not indicate that these publications are part of advertising campaigns and that they may abuse the viewer’s good faith.
The main obstacle, however, is that the CNMC does not currently have a legal definition of the Requirements necessary to be considered a social prescriber or influencerso that they can be involved in the drafting of the General Law on Audiovisual Communications.
Currently, they are governed by the provisions of the LSSI (Law 34/2002 on Information Society Services, which stipulates the need to uniquely identify the natural or legal person on whose behalf the commercial communication is made electronically so that the viewer can obtain a Clearly distinguish independent opinion from sponsored content that is advertising.
Autocontrol, an independent body that ensures self-regulation in the advertising industry, recommends this when sponsored content is published be informed clearly and visibly characters or phrases that refer to “advertising” or “content sponsored by …” can face fines of up to 30,000 euros.
