Posted on 09/09/2019 4:13:42 PM PDT by RummyChick
An seven-year-old millionaire YouTuber may be facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission amid accusations that he pushed unwitting children into buying toys made by his sponsors.
Ryan Kaji is the star of Ryan ToysReview channel, which has 21 million subscribers, and sees him unbox and play with toys which he then reviews. The child is worth $22million and was last year named YouTube's highest earner by Forbes magazine.
The account is run by his parents, Shion Guan and his 35-year-old wife Kieu-Loan, who calls herself Loann.
Together, they have found themselves at the center of a row after a lobbying group said they did not make it clear to other children that he was pushing toys from companies that had sponsored him.
In a complaint filed to the FTC, consumer watchdog Truth In Advertising accused Ryan of not clearly disclosing paid sponsorship from brands such as Walmart.
They say that 90 percent of the family's videos include a paid-for product but that they do not always label them as such.
Google - which owns YouTube and takes a 45 percent cut of ad revenue from influencers - has not commented on the complaint.
When contacted by DailyMail.com, a spokesman referred back to a recent policy change in content designed for children which will stop personalized ads on all kids' content over the next four months.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
First, the parents are buying not the kids. Second, the parents are not idiots.
Too many scams, like this, without disclosure that these are paid endorsements. Personally I hope that all the money is forfeited as fines. Need to put a stop to this fraud.
Not much detail.
It seems like it may be petty, but not much info.
Here’s a scoop. Commercials are paid for.
Lol. You are consistently funny.
See money, find offense, sue...
Putting your young child on the internet for your own personal gain? You know a good chunk of the audience are pedo pervs.
I can’t believe the FTC is going after a 7-year-old kid from Nowheresville, Flyover State. Aren’t there enough cheating megacorps to occupy the FTC’s time?
And Amazon has millions of fake/paid reviews and nothing happens to them.
“”he pushed unwitting children into buying toys made by his sponsors.””
I can’t follow this...How would kids even know there is a You Tube of this and WHY would parents not be aware of what their kids are watching? Do they buy anything and everything their kids desire? Or do the kids get in the family car and drive to Wal Mart to buy what they see on You Tube? That’s where that kid was going when he took off in his grandfather’s car a few months ago, I bet!
I know - stupid questions! Personally, I think this kid is pretty obnoxious and only 7 years old? He’ll be intolerable in a few more years unless money buys friends for him!
“Need to put a stop to this fraud.”
Oh, sure. Take the kid’s earnings and give it to the government so they can divvy it up amongst themselves (giving a pittance to illegal Border Jumpers, of course)!
Government is there to help us. They are our protectors. They would never do anything like that. :)
Some people hate kids. This is a big ‘industry’ People tune in to view boxes being opened to see the contents. Much money is being made. there is no fraud.
Worse than the Milli Vanilli scandal. Next thing you know, we’re going to find out that professional wrestling is staged.
Yeah, I guess $22 million in Google ad revenue wasn’t enough for the parents. They really needed that extra twelve dollars and seventy-five cents paid under the table by the toy companies..
If the child ever makes a pro conservative comment then his channel will be banned.
His parents are obviously genius marketeers.
The group “Truth In Advertising” is doing the “going after” by filing a complaint with the FTC. Whether the FTC does anything is yet to be seen. The news article isn’t even clear on the topic...is the kid getting sponsorship revenue above & beyond the YouTube ad revenue? If not then the complaint against the kid is invalid....Google/YT has plenty of lawyers that take care of ad revenue law compliance on their platform.
I'm not following.
Walmart is a store, not a brand. Are they saying that the store provided the toys and he didn't declare that?
Are these toys generally available at many stores? What difference does it make that he played with one acquired from Walmart rather than, say, Target?
For the sake of argument, suppose he played with toys from Hasbro. Does this mean that Milton Bradley can complain that he's not playing with their toys?
-PJ
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