DSSRC Administrative Closure #113

The Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council (“DSSRC”) contacted a direct selling company (“Company”) regarding three Facebook posts disseminated by Company salesforce members that were identified during DSSRC’s monitoring of the direct selling industry. DSSRC expressed its concern to the Company that all of the posts implied that the Company products are effective to treat a number of health-related conditions including, but not limited to, autism, cancer and diabetes. 

Immediately after the Company received notice of the DSSRC inquiry, DSSRC was informed that two of the posts at issue originated from salesforce members located in Nigeria and the other post was disseminated from a salesforce member in the Philippines. The Company stated that its internal team has made efforts to identify the people who posted these pages but have been unable to identify the salesforce members. Notwithstanding this conundrum and fully understanding the egregiousness of the claims that were the subject of the inquiry. the Company pledged to DSSRC that would continue utilizing its best efforts to identify the salesforce members responsible for the social media posts at issue and have the posts taken down. 

While DSSRC’s jurisdictional purview is limited to social media posts originating in the United States, it remains concerned with any unsupported product or business opportunity claims arising from social media posts that may be accessible by consumers in the United States. Here, although the social media posts at issue remain active on Facebook, the Company has exhibited a bona fide, good faith effort to coordinate its remedial actions with its compliance team leaders overseas. Moreover, the Company has assured DSSRC that it will continue to pursue enforcement actions against the salesforce members responsible for the posts which includes contacting Facebook and effectuating its intellectual property rights if necessary. 

Accordingly based upon the Company’s good faith actions to address the concerns of DSSRC, this matter has been administratively closed with the caveat that DSSRC will continue to monitor the status of the subject posts and follow-up with the Company after a reasonable period of time to assess the additional efforts of the Company to have the posts disabled. 

(closed on 12/23/2020)