William McGeveran, “Disclosure, Endorsement and Identity in Social Marketing,” University of Illinois Law Review, 2009

University of Minnesota Law School Associate Professor William McGeveran discusses the problems posed by Internet marketing that collects and disseminates information about individual purchases as a form of product endorsement among the purchaser’s friends and acquaintances. The author describes how such marketing has already occurred on social networking platforms and the backlash it created.

The article explains how current legal paradigms, such as privacy, trademark and consumer protection law, may not provide the protection needed for invasion of privacy by “social marketing” and posits that a common theme to the objections to this type of Web 2.0 marketing is the issue of genuine user consent. McGeveran recommends regulatory best practices to rein in any excesses and theorizes that giving a person control over whether information about her purchase can be used to market a product would go a long way toward resolving some of the concerns that have been raised.