Influencers don’t have to label opinion as an advertisement

What actually sounds like a self-evident statement in the headline and may make many readers scratch their heads a little is in the current phase, in which it seems difficult to give perfect advice to influencers, streamers and other media-active mandates, perhaps not so self-evident.

On this very basis, however, the District Court of Hamburg this year overturned an injunction that was originally issued, which had previously been issued against an influencer on Instagram.

In the specific case, the 12th Civil Chamber of the Regional Court finally denied a commercial intention and decided that there had been a purely private expression of opinion. Freedom of expression also allows us to express its views on economic issues and also on companies and products, and to make negative and positive recommendations in this context.

With this ruling, however, the court is not so much going against the prevailing case law on labeling obligations, but is rather in line with, for example, the Court of Appeal in Berlin(see this article), which had thus corrected the Regional Court of Berlin(see this article).

The jurisprudence thus always crystallises that it is important to answer in detail the question whether an advertising label is necessary in the concrete way of the post, the concrete content and the respective circumstances (such as the events of the day). In the meantime, as a lawyer, you can give a rather good and helpful guide to this question.

Of course, it also depends on the specific way of the social media channel, namely how many followers you have, what other content is available and whether products are bought themselves or are mostly sponsored.

Author: Marian Härtel

Marian Härtel ist Rechtsanwalt und Fachanwalt für IT-Recht mit einer über 25-jährigen Erfahrung als Unternehmer und Berater in den Bereichen Games, E-Sport, Blockchain, SaaS und Künstliche Intelligenz. Seine Beratungsschwerpunkte umfassen neben dem IT-Recht insbesondere das Urheberrecht, Medienrecht sowie Wettbewerbsrecht. Er betreut schwerpunktmäßig Start-ups, Agenturen und Influencer, die er in strategischen Fragen, komplexen Vertragsangelegenheiten sowie bei Investitionsprojekten begleitet. Dabei zeichnet sich seine Beratung durch einen interdisziplinären Ansatz aus, der juristische Expertise und langjährige unternehmerische Erfahrung miteinander verbindet. Ziel seiner Tätigkeit ist stets, Mandanten praxisorientierte Lösungen anzubieten und rechtlich fundierte Unterstützung bei der Umsetzung innovativer Geschäftsmodelle zu gewährleisten.