In our latest episode, Nasir and Matt are covering the legal issues on Social Media. The average person spends most of their day on social media, whether they are scrolling for hours or publishing their own content. However, just because you publish your own content on Instagram does not equate to you owning that image. The law is a little complicated and the solutions aren't always clear. Brands that work with influencers gain a lot of attention, but all too frequently, influencers break the law by not adhering to them.
Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome! We are covering social media and the law.
MATT: This is not even something you would have to think about.
NASIR: Do you have the right to do whatever you want?
MATT: There’s potential biases.
NASIR: You have influencers’ endorsements. Who owns what?
MATT: Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and stuff like that.
This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub.
NASIR: All right. Welcome. We are pretty much an A to Z – or Facebook to Twitter as I like to call it – of law and social media. How are you doing, Matt?
MATT: Yeah, doing well. You know, the interesting thing about this topic is I guess it’s still relatively new, but if you had a business a few decades ago, this is not even something you would have to think about – at least in this sort of context. It’s always evolving because social media is always evolving but, yeah, there are a lot of considerations for business owners with this.
NASIR: And it keeps changing, so much so that we actually did an episode similar – not quite the same – on social media and the law about 2017. If you take 2021 and minus 2017, that’s how many years ago it was.
MATT: Yeah, it’d be interesting. Like you said, I mean, even four years ago, I’m sure some of the things we talked about are vastly different than what we are going to talk about today – new laws, new rules. It’s something that people have to stay on top on pretty heavily.
NASIR: Right. I mean, even four years ago, social media from a legal perspective, I’m not sure how much it changed, but the way we use it keeps adapting. I’m trying to think in social media what’s been really different here. I don’t think TikTok existed four years ago. Or it barely existed, right? What other mediums? There are also mediums that are no longer existing. Wasn’t there that one where you can have those 7-second videos? What was that?
MATT: Vine.
NASIR: Vine, yeah, that’s gone. I think it was Vine, yeah. Did Twitter buy them out or something?
MATT: I’m not sure. I thought they closed down, but maybe.
NASIR: Yeah, it goes back and forth.
MATT: I think it was probably, if I can remember correctly, I think Facebook was more popular. Things like Instagram were probably less popular. I’m sure there are still a lot of Facebook users, but my guess is the popularity of those two flipped a little bit. It depends on the demographic too, but that’s kind of the general observation I’ve had.
NASIR: Right. We also went through the Trump administration which, of course, when it came to social media, there’s been quite a bit of activity with our president tweeting almost every single day multiple times. And so, that obviously was a big kind of cultural shift, I think – the mainstreaming of social media. When I have my parents getting on Facebook and Twitter and things like that, then you know we’ve gotten to a new level.
MATT: I didn’t even think about it from that context. Obviously, that was a big thing at the time. Since then, he was kicked off for a period of time. Is he back on? I haven’t paid attention.
NASIR: I think he’s still off. I mean, I don’t know about every platform,
