An Ethics Page Most Creators Won't Write
Why I just published a public, versioned, dated standard for every brand partnership at HicksNewMedia
Most creator-economy ethics talk happens in two places: comments sections after a creator gets caught doing something shady, and conference panels where everyone agrees that disclosure matters and then nothing changes.
I just published something different.
At hicksnewmedia.com/ethics, there’s now a public, dated, version-controlled standard that governs every brand partnership, sponsored placement, and affiliate relationship at HicksNewMedia. It’s not aspirational. It’s not marketing copy. It’s the operational document that runs the partnership side of the business — and it’s in writing now where you can read it, hold me to it, and email me when I fall short of it.
This post explains why.
The problem nobody in the creator economy wants to name
The creator economy has a trust problem.
Here’s the math: creators sell access to audiences. Brands pay for that access in cash or in-kind. The transaction itself is straightforward and not inherently bad — it’s how most independent media throughout history has been funded. The problem isn’t the transaction. It’s the asymmetry of information around it.
When a creator with 200,000 subscribers tells you a piece of software is “amazing,” you don’t know:
Whether they actually use it themselves
Whether they tested it on real work, or just took a curated demo
What they were paid to say what they’re saying
Whether they have equity, advisory shares, or a long-term contract with the company
What they think about competitors they didn’t mention
What they’d say if you asked them off-camera
Some creators answer every one of those questions on every piece of content. Most don’t answer any of them. The audience has no way to tell the difference until something goes wrong — and by then, the recommendation has already done its work.
I’ve been on the receiving end of bad recommendations from creators I trusted. So have you. The cost isn’t just the money spent on the wrong tool — it’s the slow erosion of trust in the entire format. And in a creator economy that’s getting more crowded, more commercialized, and more AI-saturated every quarter, that erosion is the existential threat. Not platform algorithm changes. Not monetization shifts. Trust.
So the question every creator should be answering, in public, where the audience can see it: what protections are in place to make sure the access you’re selling is worth what you’re charging?
What I built
The Ethics page is the answer for HicksNewMedia. It’s broken into ten operational sections covering everything from how I vet products before accepting partnerships, to what I won’t promote regardless of the offer, to how I handle corrections when I get something wrong.
The whole thing is anchored by five rules. If you read nothing else on the page, read these:
1. I only recommend products I’ve actually used. The “would I use it” test is run before money enters the conversation — 30-day trial at production scale, inside a real HicksNewMedia workflow, with an honest opinion formed before commercial terms are discussed. Products that fail the test don’t ship. I’ve walked away from five-figure deals after two weeks of testing because the product didn’t deliver on the page-one pitch.
2. The brand approves the brief. I write the script. Brands tell me what they want the audience to know. I decide how to say it. Sponsored content can include constructive criticism of the sponsor’s product — in fact, balanced sponsored content performs better than pure cheerleading, both for audience trust and for the brand’s reputation. Retroactive edits to remove unflattering observations are off the table.
3. Every sponsored placement is disclosed — on screen, in writing, on the audience side. Disclosure within the first 30 seconds of any video. Plain-English statement in every description. Affiliate links labeled at the point of recommendation, not buried in a footer. Gifted product disclosed even when no money changed hands. FTC compliance is the floor, not the ceiling.
4. When brand and audience interests conflict, the audience wins. This is the tiebreaker that holds the rest of the system together. If a partner ships an update that’s bad for users, I say so. If a brand pressures for messaging changes that would mislead the audience, the partnership ends. The audience is paying with their attention — that’s a real currency — and they deserve at least the same standard of care that the brand paying with dollars does.
5. When I get it wrong, I say so publicly. Corrections are public, not quiet. Significant errors trigger a full follow-up piece, not just a card or pinned comment. Reader and viewer corrections get treated as a feature of the system, not an attack on it. For sponsored content, corrections are issued at HicksNewMedia’s cost — the accountability sits with me, not the brand that paid for the original piece.
The full page expands each of these into operational detail.
The supporting structure
The ethics standard doesn’t stand alone. Three companion pages shipped alongside it on the same day:
/disclosures — A quarterly transparency log of every active commercial relationship, equity position, advisory role, and affiliate program at HicksNewMedia. Reviewed and updated four times a year. Empty categories are flagged as empty, not hidden. The bar: if a reasonable viewer would care that I have skin in the game, they get told.
/privacy — A plain-English privacy policy explaining what data the network collects, why, who else sees it, and how to remove it. Written for humans first, lawyers second. Every third-party vendor (Google Analytics, Supabase, Ghost, Stripe, Pagely) is named and linked.
/ethics/changelog — A version-controlled history of the ethics page itself. Every time the standard changes, the change gets dated, summarized, and listed. No silent edits to the rules over time. If something gets weakened, you’ll see when and why.
Together, the four pages form a transparency stack. The ethics page tells you what the standard is. The disclosures page tells you what current relationships exist that could affect coverage. The privacy page tells you what happens to your data when you visit. The changelog tells you how all of this has changed over time, and when. Each page links to the others so the structure stays coherent regardless of where someone enters it.
What this isn’t
Worth being clear about a few things this isn’t.
It isn’t performative. I’d rather not have written it at all than have it sit there as marketing copy. Every line is either something I’ve already been doing for years, or something I’m committing to publicly so the audience can hold me to it going forward. If a section is in the document, the practice is in operation.
It isn’t a one-time announcement. The quarterly review on the disclosures page and the changelog mechanism on the ethics page mean this stack stays current. If I add a partnership, it goes in the log within five business days. If the standard changes, it gets dated and version-bumped.
It isn’t proof of compliance. A creator can publish the most rigorous ethics page on the internet and still let their actual practice slip. The page is a public commitment, not proof that I’m living up to it day in and day out. The proof is in the content — in whether the disclosures actually appear, whether the corrections actually run, whether the partnerships actually pass the would-I-use-it test before they ship. If you spot a gap, the page tells you exactly where to send the receipts.
It isn’t unique to brand-partnership content. The principles — accuracy, disclosure, audience-first — apply to everything HicksNewMedia publishes, including original editorial coverage where no commercial relationship exists. The ethics page documents the standard for partnerships specifically because that’s where the trust most often gets tested. But the same posture runs through the rest of the work.
The ask
A few things, in order of how directly they affect you.
If you’re an audience member: read the page. Hold me to it. If you see content that doesn’t match the standard — a missing disclosure, a recommendation that doesn’t pass the would-I-use-it test, a correction that should have been issued and wasn’t — email ethics@hicksnewmedia.com. That email goes to me personally, not to a PR queue. I respond within five business days. Anonymous reports are accepted.
If you’re a brand or partnership inbound: the entire page goes out before contracts do, so we’re aligned on the standard before commercial terms are discussed. If reading it makes you reconsider whether HicksNewMedia is the right partner, that’s the page doing its job. Different creators, different standards. Yours might be a better fit elsewhere.
If you’re another creator: feel free to use the structure as a template. The page layout, the section organization, the changelog mechanism — none of it is proprietary. If publishing your own version moves the format forward, the entire creator economy benefits. The standards aren’t a competitive moat. They’re a floor that everyone benefits from raising.
Closing
I named the company HicksNewMedia ten years ago around a specific idea: that the people deciding what gets built — IT professionals, technical decision-makers, builder-class creators — deserve coverage that respects their time and their intelligence. No Hype. Just the Facts. is the editorial line.
The ethics page is what that line looks like when it’s written down operationally instead of stated abstractly. It’s the receipts.
Read it: hicksnewmedia.com/ethics
Send feedback: ethics@hicksnewmedia.com
The standard is in writing. The audience wins the tiebreaker. Everything else is the work.