In March 2017, regulators sent a polite request to 90 different brands, celebrities, and influencers. The letter was intended to be a warning. Influencers now needed to let the public know when they were being paid to post something and include a disclosure at the top of the caption, not hidden in a pile of hashtags or after a long description, or else face fines. The sponsorship had to be clear and unmistakable, not something like #thankyouAdidas, or a hashtag like #sp, which some influencers were using as shorthand for “sponsored.”
