France Could Make it Mandatory to Label Influencers’ Filtered or Doctored Images

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Friday that the country could make it mandatory for influencers to label filtered or doctored images, as Women’s Wear Daily reported.

In a conference, Le Maire said that influencers posting retouched photos and videos on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok should be regulated in an effort to “limit the destructive psychological effects of these practices on Internauts’ esteem.” He said that there’s approximately 150,000 influencers in France, which is something the government supports but not at the expense of consumers.

The French government is planning to launch an oversight team at the Directorate General for Consumer Affairs, Competition and Fraud Prevention to effectively regulate influencers if the proposal is signed into law. It’ll be highlighted as part of a bill in the next week, and could make it so no influencer can post a photoshopped or filtered image without making it clear that it’s been touched up. 

“All promotion for cosmetic surgery by an influencer as part of a paid partnership will be prohibited,” said Le Maire. “I want to say to the influencers who do not respect the law, from now on, we will have a zero-tolerance approach. No sidestepping or breaking the rules.”

This isn’t the first time the French government has suggested such a move. Back in 2017, the country passed a law that mandated photos that featured photoshopped bodies would need to be labeled as such. Any manipulated image would need to be presented alongside the words “photographie retouchée” (retouched photograph). Any images used for advertising purposes are beholden to the law, both in print and online.