Platform Privacy is a Problem
Influencers are giving up all their personal information just to apply for a campaign
There is a growing trend in the creator economy that raises massive privacy concerns. More and more brands are using influencer platforms like Mavrck, Grin, and AspireIQ to handle their campaign applications and are asking influencers for all their personal details + access to their social accounts just to apply for a collaboration. The majority of which are free product exchanges and based on our experience over 90% of the influencers that apply are not accepted. Why does a brand need all that data for an application and what happens to it if the influencer is not accepted? Do influencers even know their data is being collected by the platforms?
All that personal info just to apply?
The first red flag here is why does a brand need all of your personal information just to apply for a campaign? Full name, gender, race, mailing address, phone number and birthdate are items more commonly found on financial documents or loan applications, not influencer campaigns. Addresses would be needed if the brand is shipping a product but that can easily be collected after the influencer is accepted into the campaign.
It is tough to understand why gender, race, birthdates, and phone numbers are required outside of classifying the influencer for other purposes on these platforms. Brands should be looking at the influencer’s actual social profile(s) to get a feel for the type of person they are or asking them to provide some relevant content examples. Instead, these applications feel more like a government census report.
The second red flag and even more concerning one is asking influencers to connect their social accounts via the Facebook/IG API. Connecting social accounts once an influencer has been accepted into a campaign is a standard industry practice but asking beforehand is a little suspect. Take a look at the permissions:
This is nearly every possible permission that you can ask for when using the Facebook/IG API. Again why is this much information necessary just to vet a creator for a collaboration? The insights permission is understandable as that can reduce the need to ask every applicant for screenshots and help eliminate influencer fraud. But requesting access to page settings, reading fan messages/comments, or viewing ad account information will not help you vet a creator any better.
Why can’t creators delete the data?
Working with 100s of talents over the last 5 years, I have seen requests to fill out countless forms to gather information on possible influencers but until recently that process was manual. So the need for an automated campaign/collaboration sign-up was definitely there but is this the best way for the industry?
FamePick deals with creator data on a daily basis as well so we are well aware of the concerns around data privacy and giving creators choices when it comes to managing their data. This is why when a creator signs up to use FamePick/LinkFolio, they get to choose what social accounts they connect and they get to choose what insights to share, it is not required on sign up. And if a FamePick user decides they don’t want an account anymore, they can simply remove it from their profile and ask for account deletion. Simple as that.
Back to these new collaboration applications...Collecting this amount of data from creators just to sign up is one issue, but not giving them the option of deleting this information is a much bigger problem. Without getting into EU or California data privacy laws, not allowing creators the option to delete their data is a major issue. There is currently no option to remove the data collected by brands/platforms until you are accepted into a campaign or become an actual user of the platforms.
So I reached out to dozens of brands that are using these new application tools asking what happens after an influencer applies for a campaign? Only one brand replied with a generic ‘update’ 4+ weeks after we applied:
I then followed up again with each brand, asking them to delete the personal information and analytics from the influencers they didn’t accept. Not a single brand rep has responded to date.
How are Mavrck & other platforms using the data?
If platforms and brands are not providing a way for creators to delete the data they have collected, then what are they using it for? This is the big question and creators are not going to like the answer…platforms like Mavrck, AspireIQ and Grin are selling your data to other brands.
I looked through the terms of service of these platforms and there is no real mention of how creator data is shared. The closest I found is from Mavrck:
Like most, these Privacy Policy terms are vague and Mavrck doesn’t actually provide a way to request your data be removed, they push that responsibility to the individual brands.
As a brand, one of the benefits of paying thousands of dollars every month (AspireIQ plans start at $2,500/month) to be on these platforms is the mass amount of information they have on the creators. From addresses to birthdays and Instagram engagement rates. All the information you provide when you apply for collaboration should be shared with only the brand you applied with but it’s clearly not. It’s used to match your profile with other brands on the platform. That’s how these bigger platforms are claiming they have access to hundreds of thousands of ‘opted in’ influencers.
Keep in mind, these application forms have minimal to zero platform branding and the majority of creators won’t even know that their information will be shared on the platform after they apply nor will they be compensated in any way. Now some creators might be ok with this as it could possibly lead to securing other brand deals but if you aren’t, the platforms leave you no way to remove your data that you didn’t even know they had.
This is a major issue in the current creator economy that needs to addressed.
Questions? Comments? Find me on Twitter: @mzuvella or follow us @famepick.