Should Influencers prove they are experts in their fields before posting about it?

I don’t think ‘unqualified’ influencers should be banned.  ‘Qualified’ influencers, being biased, may not report accurately anyway. Perhaps they should all be lumped together in a new category that displays ‘ADVERTISEMENT’ in big letters throughout their spiel.

I am not influenced by the opinions of celebrities who talk about all sorts of things on TV shows. I don’t understand why people think they are best placed to offer advice. 

It only covers finance, medicine, law and education so I think you would be fine (that is if you are planning to move to china!).

I wonder too? How would people get to become experts and who would be knowlegable enough? Would I be able to suggest hair products or styles, I'm a qualified hairdresser, but would that be enough? I'm a good cook, but I've got no qualifications, would I be able to post a recipe?

I think the rule "no medical advice" on the forum is similar.

TheCatWoman said:

I can' timagine what it would be like if the rules were stricter, we wouldn't be able to talk about anything.

It would indeed prevent most of us being able to post even links to advice if we were not qualified to say that it was valid advice.

I wonder how it works for companies that post advice articles - must they all be written by qualified professionals? I wonder how that would impact NAS and their moderators.

It's difficult enough on here to share things that have worked for us, I can' timagine what it would be like if the rules were stricter, we wouldn't be able to talk about anything.

Yes I absolutely agree. I nearly went down that route with my response but decided just to reply about what I actually thought. Things like influencers and social media are always going to be difficult. Yes they could do with stricter rules and managing but how do you do that without taking away freedom of speech. There are definitely problems with things on the internet but I wouldn't want to live under the kind of regime that China has.

I suspect this is more about the Chinese government wanting there to be only one source of information, them.

Maybe efforts would be better spent trying to educate people in critical thinking and not believing everything someone says to them, but this is China and critical thinking isn't allowed, you might turn it on the government!

It isn't new that those that know least espouse their opinions the most - the expression "empty vessels make the most noise" comes to mind.  However it only really becomes a problem when they are being paid to advertise scams or use pseudoscience to sell products (which should be caught by current laws).

I should mention I've never watched an influencer so would have no interest in anything they would say.

I'm not sure how I feel on this one because in some ways I do - there is a lot of misinformation on the internet and influencers so not always help this, some intentionally some not. Certainly there are topics that people should not be giving advice on etc if they are not qualified to.

But what about those that are raising awareness of their own experiences - what it is like to be blind, or in a wheelchair or neurodivergent. They wouldn't be officially qualified but can probably give a better insight than a lot of qualified people.