Antitrust, how the authority moved between investors and influencers

Wild West? Not any more. If the influencer on duty communicates easy earnings on his social channel or website, he will have to reckon with the Agcm authority, better known as the Antitrust Authority. This is what happened in 2025, the year in which the pressure of the body chaired by Roberto Rustichelli on influencers increased, and not only in the investment sector. Episodes reported in the authority's annual report released on Tuesday.

What Agcm calls influence marketing 'may present a higher risk of hidden and misleading advertising than other forms of online advertising'. Consequence? "Several proceedings have been concluded for alleged misleading conduct spread by influencer marketing, via social and internet channels related to the issues of surreptitious advertising, fake followers and easy money". We are particularly interested in the latter area.

"The Authority," reads Agcm's annual report, "conducted six investigations in the credit sector against the influencers Luca Marani, Luca De Stefani, Alessandro Berton, Davide Caiazzo, Hamza Mourai and Michele Leka, who promoted strategies to obtain easy earnings and make investments (including in cryptocurrencies) without clarifying the advertising nature of the communications disseminated, nor the risks connected to such operations. Activities that, according to Agcm, violated some articles of the Consumer Code.

In the course of the proceedings, it is specified, four of the six influencers (Marani, Berton, Mourai and Caiazzo) 'presented substantial commitments' such as the removal from all social channels and websites used by them, of expressions that 'emphasise easy or risk-free earnings'; advertising disclaimers were inserted; non-authentic followers were removed 'from their social profiles' as well as a commitment to monitoring with appropriate tools; and 'to make their online activities compliant with consumer legislation'.

For these reasons, the authority considered these commitments to be suitable 'to eliminate the alleged unfairness', and closed the proceedings without finding infringements.