What is the financial value of social media exposure by influencers? Do said influencers deserved to be publicly shamed for proposing exposure as payment?
Those are questions that have grappled Indonesia’s netizens since one of the country’s most famous influencers allegedly proposed to pay businesses not with money, but with exposure on her social media channels in exchange for their services.
Karin Novilda, who is popularly known by her social media persona Awkarin, and her talent management agency, A Team, have been accused of exploiting her popularity to do just that on several occasions over the past couple of weeks.
It began with a tweet earlier in the month in which Awkarin asked for help from netizens to find her an event organizer who was willing to be paid in social media posts.
“Twitter please do your magic. I’m looking for an available EO for 7, 8, 9 August who want to collab (in exchange for exposure) for A Team’s retreat event,” Awkarin wrote in a now-deleted tweet.
That tweet prompted a torrent criticism against the social media star, who was widely mocked for what netizens said was a false sense of entitlement common among social media influencers.
Please welcome, the latest payment method: E X P O S U R E pic.twitter.com/kH5bg08pBl
— ⋆ (@RistyRianda) August 5, 2019
Then, earlier this week, a radio host posted screenshots of a chat conversation between a man named Dharma Santhika, who appears to run a lounge in South Jakarta, and Awkarin as well as members of her A Team.
Mau bikin event di bar tp bayarnya pake exposure. dah gitu aja tweetnya
cr: ig @ajung.scamy pic.twitter.com/5OruNNTwnE
— · Gerald Gerald · (@_geraldgerald_) August 13, 2019
In the first screenshot, an A Team rep asks Dharma if they could use his lounge for a music launch event for two musicians repped by agency. The A Team member promises “promotion on Instagram Stories” for use of the venue.
“I wonder how much it will be if exposure can be valued in rupiah,” Dharma mockingly replied in the chat.
The second screenshot shows Awkarin herself sending a DM to Dharma, reprimanding him for posting the screenshots online and treating the A Team rep with disrespect.
“If it’s not possible then you could’ve just rejected [the rep],” she wrote to Dharma.
Dharma responded by saying that Awkarin should’ve known better about the ethics of the promotions business but apologized nonetheless for publicly mocking A Team.
Today, Awkarin is one of the biggest social media influencers in the country with over 4.6 Instagram followers and 1.3 million subscribers on Youtube. Like any other influencer, Awkarin gets most of her income from paid promotions and she can reportedly charge millions of rupiah for one Instagram post due to her massive audience.
Influencers feeling like they’re entitled to many of life’s perks because of how many likes they have is certainly not uncommon. While many would argue that proposing to pay in exposure is condescending and arrogant, even for the most influential of influencers, is shaming them online and revealing private business negotiations to the public equally inappropriate?
The question is especially relevant in Indonesia, where all kinds of online defamation are punishable by imprisonment under the controversial Information and Electronic Transactions Act (UU ITE). Influencers should know better by now than to insult businesses with propositions of payment with exposure, while businesses should know that maintaining confidentiality in their dealings can be a virtue as well.
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