'I think the FTC is going to have a very strong desire to throw the book at Twitter.'
when they logged on that their blue check was somehow still there, even though they weren't coughing up $8 a month to keep it. Musk later admitted to paying for those checks himself, explaining them away as gifts.
But as John Davisson, the senior counsel and director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center,, there's a chance that Musk's "gifting" can be counted as deceptive marketing — a big no-no in the eyes of the federal law and, of course, the regulating body that is the FTC. "Star power is a valuable marketing tool, and Twitter clearly knows that — how else to explain the decision to restore blue checkmarks only to the most popular accounts?" Davisson explained toin an email. "But if a celebrity hasn’t actually subscribed to Twitter Blue, it's [a] materially misleading statement to claim they have."
Davisson's comment does make a lot of sense. After all, over on Instagram and TikTok, celebrities and influencers are legally obligated to disclose if and when a company is paying them for promotions Twitter, another social media platform, should surely operate the same way. Of course, it's a bit of a different situation, considering that said influencers — some of whom, in a very gross turn,
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