| They play it very German because German authorities have fined German content creators for trying to play it loose and American. For a while German advertising agencies loved using influencers because they were ignorant of advertising regulations and would let them get away with things that were blatantly illegal to do in any other medium (but also, as it turned out, the media used by those influencers). Once legal precedents were set, that stopped. It's similar to how a lot of "disruptions" in the startup space work (gig economy, "sharing" economy, crypto, AI, etc): find a niche that lacks established legal precedents, do obviously illegal things in that niche, make a profit to cash out the investors, get fined as laws and court rulings catch up, rinse and repeat. Can't operate a taxi without a license? They're not cabbies, they're independent contractors. Renting residential homes out as vacation homes would violate zoning laws? They're not vacation home rentals, they're "spare guest rooms" rented out by private individuals. Can't afford to pay delivery drivers? They're not entitled to a minimum wage because they're now independent contractors of a delivery startup with a catchy name. Scalping tickets, parking spaces and restaurant seats is illegal? It's not scalping, it's a universal digital assistant. Can't sell meme stocks directly to clueless retail investors? They're not stocks, they're coins and NFTs. Can't discriminate against marginalized people? It's not discrimination when the machine learning algorithm made the decision based on prejudices in the training data. Have to pay royalties to use a picture you like? It's no longer the same picture if you launder it through an AI image generation model that used it as training data. |