18/06/2014
"Wikipedia's Terms of Use for Marketers Explained" http://hub.am/1kOKwWp
The Wall Street Journal and others have been covering the Wikimedia Foundation's announcement of a new Terms of Use, which require that if you are editing Wikipedia on behalf of a person or organization that you have a financial connection with, that you disclose your affiliation. The FAQ that accomodates the new Terms of Use explains what we've been saying at Ethical Wiki for over a year; that this disclosure is already required by section 255.5 of the Federal Trade Commission's commercial practices law, which require disclosures of a material connection. This law is intended to prevent astrotufing, where financial interests pretend to be a part of an organic, spontaneous crowd on a crowd-sourced website, in order to make it appear as though the message is more independent than it is actually.