The next speaker in this session at the ECREA 2026 conference in Brno is Bjarki Valtysson, whose focus is on regulating the cultural production of Danish influencers, with a case study of parents and child influencers Jas and Mika, who construct a platforms ecosystem based on perceptions of family life, authenticity, and intimacy, while promoting brands, products, and commercial ventures. This takes place in a legislative grey zone.
These influencers have some 317,000 YouTube subscribers, which has very large by Danish standards; they post long (~25 minutes) videos on YouTube and Instagram every Sunday morning (and their dog has his own YoiuTube channel, run by their parents), and have commercial sites selling various merchandise and other products. Their daughter and dog feature prominently in any such content.
This all operates somewhere between the various EU laws (DSA, DMA, AVMSD, GDPR, Ai Act, Digital Fairness Act), and it is not clear which specific regulations apply to what parts of their work. How it is perceived and responded to by their fan communities across various platforms is also an open question. Some of these might even be seen as predatory communities.
These videos engage in excessive consumerism, but also present traditional family values. Much of this is interspersed with obvious product placement and promotions, which is sometimes also signalled by disclaimers and discount codes – but product placements are not necessarily disclosed as commercials, especially also for their own products. This is especially problematic since children are the primary target for their content.
This is not a violent universe, but it targets children with excessive materialism and commercial promotion. The regulatory tools available in hybrid form are incapable of prohibiting this, or protecting children from it. This is not new; such laws have always struggled – but influencers are a particularly insidious form of new actor exploiting this.
This does not mean that regulators are powerless; but the influencer industry needs to be regulated in a much more aggressive manner – Jas and Mika are only one example of this. Denmark will need to push back against this at the European level, and also build on its public service media tradition to provide alternative content to such exploitative influencer content. A new initiative in Denmark is to establish a new media ombudsperson to role with a particular focus on the influencer industry.
