With a recent resolution, Agcom establishes the register of influencers, that is, a register in which those who do this profession must register, communicating their personal data, and which establishes a series of rules to be respected. It would be a great idea, because we know well that the world of social media is full of pitfalls, and that those who have a large following also have great power over users, which can also translate into exploiting their good faith to convey lies, scams and problematic content.

The problem is that the resolution is, for a change, written with feet, and definitely poses many more problems than it offers solutions. First, who should sign up? The resolution would concern those who have more than 500 thousand total followers across the various social channels, or those who obtain an average of 1 million views per month for 6 months. Leaving aside the fact that an influencer with 200 thousand followers can very well do the same damage as those with 500 thousand, the first thing that catches the eye is that according to these criteria, many figures who are not influencers but have a huge following on Instagram or Tiktok would fall within the definition. The same goes for views, which are not an objective parameter, i.e. they do not correspond to the person’s real influence.

Absurd fines that do not take income into account

Given the numerous reports of this enormous criticality, Agcom added, with a communication (therefore not something that is written in the resolution), that to be included in the register you must earn money from activity on social media; but even in this case, what is meant? And, above all, what profit are we talking about? This is a huge problem, because in the event of a fine you understand that one account is an influencer who earns millions and another is someone who by chance has made a million views, from which, however, you don’t earn as much as someone who constantly does them. And since the fines are absurdly high (we are talking about a minimum of 250 thousand euros) I would say that it is a parameter that should be defined very carefully: it is absurd to put those who earn 10 and those who earn 1000 on the same level, given that obviously there is no question of proportioning the fine to the income coming from the online activity.

And again: the text is too vague, precisely regarding the reasons why one would be fined. In many cases, the incredible thing is that these are parameters violated first by print and television journalists. For example, we talk about editorial responsibility: those who disseminate news or comments are required to ensure correctness, avoiding fake news or misleading messages. Very well, it’s about time someone intervened to stop the hoaxes. But why is this believed to be an influencer problem? Why aren’t journalists subjected to the same rule? We know very well that the publication of biased news, and in some cases even fake videos, is very frequent.

The protection of minors takes a back seat

But the most interesting part is the one on the protection of minors, which is particularly curious: it covers everything, except the question of the use of images of minors to sell! Indeed, it is actually written “With reference to minors exposed in the contents distributed by influencers, the influencer does not cause damage to the decorum or reputation of the minor concerned”. What would that mean? Nothing, if you don’t define decorum and reputation – which, moreover, do not seem to me to be the most important parameters at all, given that with images of minors we are talking about exposing them to the possibility of being used as child pornography, for example, or we are talking about being forced by their parents to be filmed in a thousand different situations, acting, from an early age. A parent is therefore entitled to use their child’s image as they wish, as long as they use some tricks so as not to damage their “reputation”. There is a meager paragraph on this in the resolution, as if it were a secondary thing.

Unclear and variously interpretable parameters

We then talk about a ban on publishing content that is seriously harmful to the physical, mental or moral development of minors: what does this mean exactly? Much of the content online would fit this description. It is written that the critical areas are violence, sex, fundamental rights and personal safety, and then a series of parameters that are simultaneously very rigid and vague are listed: level of verisimilitude, emotional tonality… again, the parasitic journalistic reports that show the private affairs of victims of violence or murder, that invite their relatives to make them cry on television, where do we put them?

And then who are the influencers who must avoid content that is harmful to minors? A creator who works in pornography will advertise their activity, which although it is not shown explicitly, as it is prohibited by the platforms themselves, is still sufficiently suggestive to generate disturbance in a minor: trivially, how should we classify photos of porn actresses or onlyfans? The truth is that minors should not come into contact with that content at all, but since there are no limits from this point of view, we are instead thinking of fining influencers according to a complicated system of mirrors and levers. In short, post something and hope everything goes well.