Any time the financial incentives of a system encourage negative behavior, it is at least a hint that more regulation is needed.
In other media forms, the guy giving the shill would need to say up front "I was paid for this review". On youtube and instagram, I don't think this is the case.
EDIT: I was wrong, they've already charged and settled with two: TmarTn and Syndicate[2].
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/04/ftc-s...
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/09/csgo-...
1) CSGO Lotto was never a gambling site to begin with because you could play for free simply by emailing support, akin to McDonalds Monopoly [0]
2) It was public knowledge that the owners of the corporation were TmarTn and Syndicate.
[0] www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2017/12/18/16782124/csgo-lotto-lawsuit-gambling-terms-of-use-tmartn
So was the argument here that they expected children and teenagers who were primarily consuming their content to look up the public ownership records of CSGO Lotto? Since they weren't particularly open about their ownership in the videos that they advertised the site in.
Regarding the platforms, how are they supposed to know if the uploader got paid to do a video? If it was obvious, we wouldn't need these disclosures in the first place!
The models didn’t even ask for payment. I can’t imagine what the Instagram models and YouTube superstars demand.
It's speculated the biggest Youtubers pushing this are being paid up to 6 figures.
Eventually it got to the point where he had one of the top videos when you look up the product name on YT. A bit later the company sent him a bunch of their other products and he reviewed them. It's smart for the company to do that, but it makes the subsequent videos feel just a bit tainted.
It took some searching to find an amateur YouTuber in the UK giving a review of the boots. He even had 6 months and a year update. It was a low quality production but the content was so much better. This guy even walked in a creek to show they were waterproof while everyone else sat in their bedroom talking.