People seem to not have noticed the updated FTC rules, as many are defending PewDiePie these days. I don't quite understand why some are defending him, though I've never understood the internet hordes who like to show me Bill Hicks "kill yourself" advertiser routine, while simultaneously falling for what I consider every unethical trick in the book.

For the tl;dr types, the new rules at FTC regarding youtube videos are "take it from the top", it's not enough to have it in the description below the fold, it has to be upfront and mentioned in the video as the FTC states so very clearly here.

If I upload a video to YouTube and that video requires a disclosure, can I just put the disclosure in the description that I upload together with the video?
No, because it’s easy for consumers to miss disclosures in the video description. Many people might watch the video without even seeing the description page, and those who do might not read the disclosure. The disclosure has the most chance of being effective if it is made clearly and prominently in the video itself. That’s not to say that you couldn’t have disclosures in both the video and the description.

There's simply no way that any of the agencies like Plaid Social Labs and Disney owned Maker Studios didn't know this, so I agree, they should have been fined as well. Or perhaps instead of.... It's bizarre that the client, who hired professionals to help them, get fined, but not the professionals who knowingly ignored the FTC rules. What a great way to make more people agree with Bill Hicks...

Recode reports that Niantic Labs didn't intend to spy on users Google accounts.

We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon GO or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon GO’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon GO needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves.

I like it, a fun little adventure. Ever since OK Go did that weird thing with a car it feels like marrying a good tune+band to a car brand is getting a little obvious. We all listen to music in our cars. That said, please don't stop, it's a heck of a lot more creative, fun and interesting than your "celebrity spokesperson points at features" ad of yore.