In expansion for several years, the profession of influence and content creation now presents many socio-economic challenges. The use of influencers to promote products or services has developed strongly, in particular to enable companies to reach young consumers who are particularly attentive to social networks. Due to this development, the Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes (DGCCRF) has been carrying out investigations for several years in order to control the commercial practices of influencers and the respect of the provisions protecting consumers.

In order to verify compliance with these provisions, the DGCCRF services have targeted and controlled more than sixty influencers and agencies since 2021, active in the promotion of products and services such as dietary supplements, slimming programmes, cosmetics or online trading or betting services.
The checks targeted influencers with a very significant number of subscribers or who were reported by consumers. On this occasion, the services noted that the practices of 60% of the controlled influencers presented anomalies in relation to the regulation.

Lack of transparency and misleading information

All of the anomalous influencers did not respect the rules regarding the transparency of the commercial nature of their publications. Among …