Nowadays, on major social platforms, videos and posts of various weight-loss tutorials are emerging one after another. Many weight-loss bloggers promote "diet therapy weight loss methods" such as "eating, drinking, and living-based fat loss" and "following the diet to lose weight." However, according to the "Rule of Law Daily" report, many of these weight loss "experience posts" are for the purpose of attracting traffic, and behind them are "business experience".
This type of weight loss "experience posts" all have similar plots: after the blogger eats the relevant products, he still loses weight even if he eats a lot of food. Bloggers endorse the recommended products through text, pictures, videos, etc., saying they have "weight loss effects" and place product purchase links in the comment area of the post.
There may not seem to be anything wrong with similar operations at first glance, but in fact they are commercial advertising, and they are just promoting products in the name of "experience posts." However, the content displayed is rarely explicitly labeled as "advertising". This will undoubtedly mislead consumers.
Commercial advertisements in the form of "experience posts" usually focus on "personal experience" and "intimacy offensive". Many consumers fell into the trap under the verbal offensive of "sisters" and were cut off.
The Advertising Law stipulates that advertisements should be identifiable and enable consumers to identify them as advertisements. This is where those so-called “experience posts” are deliberately vague.
Many posts also use the gimmick of testing and cracking down on counterfeit certain weight-loss products to attract traffic. However, when you click on the video or post, you will find that they are recommending weight-loss pills, weight-loss tea, etc. What’s more, some weight-loss bloggers hype prescription drugs as “miraculous weight-loss drugs,” which involves drug safety and requires special vigilance.
Regarding these chaos of weight loss "experience posts", in addition to the public's need to improve their ability to identify, the platform also has a duty to do so. In particular, content involving commercial advertising and other aspects must be strictly controlled and the platform's main responsibility must be implemented.
At the same time, relevant parties must also crack down on illegal activities that deceive consumers in accordance with the law and plug loopholes from the source. If the blogger’s relevant behavior harms the rights and interests of consumers, he must not be allowed to get away with the excuse of “sharing experience”.
What needs to be recognized clearly is that the so-called "experience posts" by weight loss bloggers are still commercial advertisements in nature. Relevant content must be strictly regulated in accordance with the law, and we can no longer let it fool the public, turning "experience posts" into "leek harvesters".
□Su Shiyi (media person)
(Beijing News)