"Forgotten" Old Social Media Posts
Old posts are "active" marketing
“Forgotten” social media posts from years ago are active marketing and are fair game for enforcement. Today, I’ll explore old social media warning letter citations that include retweeting, images, videos, LinkedIn, hashtags, and more.
Retweeting: Retweeting (or is it called ReXing (smiles)) and reposting are considered endorsing the testimonial claim. For example, if a consumer wrote something nice about your product and you retweeted it, the information in the consumer tweet would now be your marketing. The risk increases if you add commentary such as “This is why we made the product.”
From warning letter: “You retweeted another user’s September 26, 2014 tweet, which said, “#lipoicacid [an ingredient in your …R-Lipoic Acid Vegcaps 100 mg] model treats autonomic neuropathy.”
Read this warning letter.
LinkedIn: Warning letters that mention claims on LinkedIn are rare, and they usually cite issues on a company’s company page rather than individual posts or claims made in easily searchable disease hashtags like # Covid. In the past, it seemed like LinkedIn did not allow posts to be indexed for Google searches, but in the past couple of months this has seemed to change, meaning that old posts are more discoverable. Because of this, I expect more LinkedIn-related warning letters this year.
Images and videos: FDA also cited claims made in images and videos. Here are some examples of 4.5-year-old Facebook and Twitter posts.
IMAGES: This post shows that imagery, especially when added to the disease-word-containing text, can be considered marketing. Here’s a recent LinkedIn post about this.
From warning letter: February 9, 2019 Twitter post: An image of the “Vision Clarity Eye Drops” with the text, “Carnosine, a cataracts worst nightmare.”
VIDEOS: This Facebook video also shows that even making implied claims can lead to a warning letter.
From warning letter: “July 11, 2019 Facebook video post. “We do not make any medical claims nor guarantees on any specific health issue, but we are very thankful that for over 10 years, people have been able to avoid having cataract surgery because they’ve used these drops.”
Read this letter.
Hashtags: Here’s a 2019 post that includes hashtags. Hashtags are easily searchable and are easy targets for agencies looking for disease-containing posts.
From warning letter: “On your April 26, 2019 tweet: “Make Nutrovape Recover your best friend and say adios to a #hangover!”
I am writing this from a beautiful beach overlook in Whangarei, New Zealand, where the birdsongs and water make an excellent place for concentration and relaxation.
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