(NewsWorthy.news) – South African comedian and TV host Trevor Noah’s working relationship with Microsoft has come under increasing scrutiny following his multiple endorsements of the company’s products in recent years. The comedian’s glowing endorsements include Microsoft’s tablet-laptop hybrid the Surface Pro X, which he promoted in a 2019 interview.
Noah has not been entirely open about the fact that he has been paid to endorse the company’s products since at least 2016. The Federal Trade Commission has recently clamped down more heavily on celebrities and influencers who fail to properly declare the monetary relationship they have with the products they promote.
The comedian and actor now hosts Microsoft’s YouTube show The Prompt, which credits Noah as the company’s “Chief Questions Officer”. The host started working with Microsoft in 2010 when he became the CEO of Cell C, a South African mobile network operator.
The FTC already reminded influencers to properly disclose their relationship with products they were endorsing in 2017. The agency is now sending warning letters to dozens of influencers regarding their endorsement of products on social media. The crackdown on insufficiently disclosed relationships is also targeting dietitian creators.
The FTC states that such business relationships must be conspicuously and clearly disclosed. Adam Candeub, who is a law professor at Michigan State University, stated that if an influencer does not make it immediately clear that they have been paid to make an endorsement of a product, they are breaking the law. Candeub added that Big Tech firms buy endorsements in a “fancy way”.
In addition to product endorsements, Noah has also hosted several interviews with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella and president Brad Smith on the Daily Show, which he departed from in 2022. He has also interviewed Smith on his podcast, on which he praised the company’s president as a “deep thinker”.
Noah claimed the first major interview with Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, shortly after Altman was briefly ousted from the company before being reinstated in late 2023. Microsoft has a 49% stake in Open AI, and Noah referred to Altman as the “Prometheus” of the current generation in reference to his pioneering work.
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