These anonymous people who organize themselves to track down the excesses of influencers

Correct Influence Required, the Influencer Assistance Collective (AVI), the Stop Abuse E-Influence page or that of Signal Arnaques...On X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, accounts intended to monitor the commercial practices of influencers multiply. “We are like whistleblowers,” says Fanny, a volunteer for the Correct Influence Required account. Launched three months ago on X, this page pinpoints, in its publications, French influencers whose paid partnerships with brands are not duly indicated as such to their subscribers. It also indicates, again via tweets, when these same influencers promote a product prohibited for sale in France.

Objective for Fanny: to alert consumers to the actions of influencers who do not respect the law governing commercial influence, promulgated last June. “In continuation of what the rapper Booba denounced,” continues Fanny. With the help of millions of subscribers who follow him on the social network, the rapper launched a fight in 2022 against the scams of what he nicknamed “influ-thieves”. And, in particular, against the founder of the influencer agency Shauna Events, Magali Berdah. The businesswoman has filed numerous complaints against the rapper and accuses him of leading a cyberharassment campaign. The latter was heard by an investigating judge on October 2.

Behind these accounts, there are anonymous people with varied profiles. “For me, it all started during confinement, I had more time to look at social networks and I learned about the world of influence,” says Fanny. Three years later, the fifty-year-old found herself forced to stop her work and decided to launch the Correct Influence Required page. “I do not have specific training to analyze the commercial practices of these influencers and it is the same for my colleague who is a computer scientist,” she admits, “we simply want these content creators to behave appropriately towards their audience.”

Just like Fanny, Helena, a member of the Assistance for Victims of Influencers (AVI) collective, discovered the world of influence during Covid. At the time, she looked after the children of her nurse sister. “With them, I had access to the Instagram publications of the reality TV stars they love and who promote a lot of products on their social networks, sometimes scams.” The AVI collective, followed by more than 26,000 people, launched in 2022 from a discussion group on X about the influencer Marc Blata.

The latter is suspected of organized gang fraud and deceptive commercial practice for two cases of alleged scams. In this case, the AVI collected testimonies and helped the alleged victims to file a complaint by collaborating with a law firm. “In the collective, there are around fifteen of us with different professions. For example, I work in tourism, another is an Uber driver…” explains Helena.

Over time, the pages in question have become structured and carefully organize their way of observing the activity of these content creators. “We view the social networks of influencers that Internet users report to us. I take care of Snapchat and my colleague takes care of Instagram,” explains Fanny, who manages the Correct Influence Required page. “We take screenshots of the profiles and we draw up a list of content that seems objectionable to us.”

The AVI collective applies the same method and has established several “poles” for its activities. These are intended for communication, monitoring influencers via what they call surveys or even collecting testimonials from Internet users. For the members of the collective, work at the AVI represents “four to five hours a day,” explains Slim, another volunteer.

Launched in 2014, the Signal Arnaques site is designed as a community space “so that everyone can report a scam online,” explains its co-founder Jean-Philippe Boisseau. Since 2020 and the increase in Internet scams, the site has dedicated its X page to influence. “Our role is to explain to consumers certain practices that may exist on social networks,” he reports. For example, in 2018, we communicated a lot about dropshipping, a form of e-commerce where delivery is made between the buyer and the supplier, without going through the seller,” he continues. “At the time, there was a peak in the phenomenon and more and more content creators were getting into it like Nabilla or Jazz Correia.”

By identifying the scams in question, these accounts make the fraudulent processes in the industry visible. “They constituted a form of pressure group for regulation, while basically the subject was progressing slowly,” considers the socialist deputy Arthur Delaporte, who introduced the law on the regulation of commercial influence with the deputy Renaissance Stéphane Vojetta. “They also helped us to better understand what scams exist, such as those of a financial nature.”

Since the promulgation of the law this summer, checks by the Fraud Repression have increased. More than fifteen content creators have been the subject of injunctions or fines from Bercy. These anonymous investigators make it their duty to verify that the influencers identified by the administration have changed their behavior, once the sanction has passed. “We regularly see influencers repeating their bad practice,” argues Fanny from the Influence Correcte Exigée account.

“There are emblematic cases of influencers who absolutely do not change the way they do things,” confirms Jean-Baptiste Boisseau, “like Dylan Thiry or Poupette Kenza for example.” Dylan Thiry received an injunction to stop his deceptive commercial practices from the DGCCRF. Since Wednesday, October 12, he has been the subject of a complaint “for defamation” from a VTC union, for having promoted false VTC licenses. Poupette Kenza, for her part, is subject to a transactional fine of 50,000 euros, proposed by the administration, for having promoted a tooth whitener banned in France.

If some of these accounts confine themselves to this method of “name and shame” (or name and shame in French), others go further. Thus, the members of the Stop Abuse E-Influence page unveil, at the end of the summer, their “class council” of influencers: “Currently, we are monitoring more than 170,” specifies one member. Far from being a simple tweet where they mention the creators of content presumed to be at fault, they go so far as to describe whether they have noticed an improvement in their behavior. And, above all, in the way they promote products or indicate their partnerships since the passage of the law.

Among the influencers cited, some are congratulated for having made an effort. “Sarah Lopez: Since the first reports, there has been a marked improvement in her management and execution of her product placements,” explains, for example, one of the publications. Others, on the contrary, have the right to remarks formulated with a particularly harsh tone. “Feliccia and Hillary, reigning champions in the art and way of specifying the sponsored mention, in small print or tone on tone,” the Internet user can read on one of the publications, before continuing: “Soukaina, from all the zouaves that we track on social networks, she is the only one who has never made the effort (even hypocritical) to notify sponsored content.

These accounts sometimes border on cyberharassment. “Often, the pages in question also launch discussion spaces on X called Space, to discuss the behavior of an influencer. But, if a person does not agree with them, they are ejected,” report some users, who preferred to remain anonymous.

Worse, they are overwhelmed by their subscribers who, for some, invent rumors about the influencers mentioned. This is the case of the influencer Poupette Kenza. Often mentioned for her product placements deemed fraudulent, these denunciation accounts also accuse her of overexposing her children on social networks. Through publications on the subject, subscribers to these pages began to spread false information about the young woman. “Some of their followers spread the rumor that she was a pedophile,” continues one of the users.

For their part, the accounts in question deny practicing any form of incitement to denunciation and harassment among their subscribers. “We only denounce when there is something illegal in what an influencer does,” insists Helena from the AVI collective. “We simply show what we see on the networks, we are not in the accusation, also defends Fanny from the Influence Correcte Exigée account, we even have influencers who responded under our publications like Illan Castronovo and Maëva Ghennam”. At the same time, the DGCCRF continues its official investigations into influencers. She intends to complete around a hundred files by the end of the year.