FTC Drops The Hammer On Jerk.com For Deceptive Trade Practices

This week, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") issued an order against Jerk, LLC and Napster co-founder John Fanning, respectively, for deceptive trade practices in connection with the operation of Jerk.com, a social media site that invited users to create profiles of other individuals and rate those individuals as a "jerk" or "not a jerk."

According to the Complaint, the FTC alleged that the violations of the FTC Act consisted of:

• Falsely representing to consumers that the content appearing on Jerk.com was generated by users, when in fact the content had been harvested from Facebook by the respondents;
• Falsely representing to consumers that through the purchase of a $30 membership, users would receive additional benefits, including the ability to dispute information posted on the site, and the ability to edit or delete a profile;