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Dh20,000 fine for social media influencers who will violate new UAE rule

The UAE’s National Media Council (NMC) announced new regulations and guidelines for advertisements on social media and the Internet—especially targeted to online influencers.

With the new guidelines, NMC unveiled that advertisements on social media must be identified clearly. “The advertisement must appear distinctly and separately from media or written material or any other material,” stated the NMC.

For social media users especially online influencers, the rule states that they must distinctly identify whether the posted content is an advertisement or not. The phrases “thank you for” or “in cooperation with” are not sufficient, NMC noted.

The guidelines also state the mandatory use of hashtags #ad or #paid_ad on their social media influencers’ posts. Moreover, these hashtags are not to be accompanied by other keywords or tags “in such a way that they are hard to see.”

Violations to the NMC’s newly set guidelines could lead to fines ranging from Dh5,000 to as much as Dh20,000. If the same violation is committed twice within a year, the fine will be doubled but shall not exceed Dh20,000, as reported by Arabian Business.

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