Online clairvoyance: when “entertainment” becomes deception
You have to call things by their name. For several years, certain online clairvoyance platforms have taken refuge behind a convenient qualification: clairvoyance is simply “entertainment”. A reassuring formula, legally useful, but profoundly far from reality. Because behind the screens, behind the up-to-the-minute consultations and the promises of insight into the future, there are no players. There are people.
These people do not come looking for leisure. They do not “consume” clairvoyance like watching a series or playing online. They come with their doubts, their anxieties, their hopes. A breakup, persistent loneliness, worry about the future, a moment of fragility. This is what encourages consultation. To imagine for a moment that these women and men are “throwing money out the window to have fun” is a worrying denial. This is to profoundly misunderstand the human reality of these practices.
Calling clairvoyance entertainment is not neutral. It’s a way of avoiding responsibilities. This means avoiding facing the vulnerability of some consumers. It is, basically, installing a legal fiction which protects the platforms more than the users. However, this fiction is becoming problematic today, because it makes it possible to trivialize practices which, in fact, touch on the intimate.
At the same time, the question of transparency remains unresolved. Exchanges between clients and practitioners pass through technical interfaces that users do not master. Few know precisely what happens to their conversations, their confidences, their doubts sometimes expressed in moments of great fragility. Are they registered? Preserved? Exploited? The information may exist, somewhere, in long and difficult to read general conditions. But can we consider that a consumer is truly informed when he does not understand what he is consenting to?
Even more troubling, some of these platforms welcome legal professionals, notably lawyers, in a world combining clairvoyance, coaching and personal support. This coexistence raises questions. Lawyer professional secrecy is not an option, it is a fundamental principle. Can it be fully guaranteed in a technical environment controlled by a third party? Does the client clearly perceive the difference between a structured legal consultation and an informal exchange on a commercial platform? There is no room for doubt here.
This is not about shaming a profession or denying the existence of serious and ethical practices. Clairvoyance exists, it is part of a tradition, and it can be practiced with rigor. But what is at issue today is not the practice itself. It is its supervision, or rather its absence of supervision adapted to the digital age.
Platforms can no longer present themselves as simple intermediaries. They organize the offer, set the rules, guide behavior, and collect commissions. They structure a market. As such, their responsibility is engaged.
It is time for public authorities to take stock of this reality. Consumer protection cannot stop where digital begins. It is necessary to clarify the rules, to demand real transparency on practices, and to put an end to misleading qualifiers which do not correspond to the real use of these services.
Because ultimately, the question is simple. Can we continue to consider an activity that people in vulnerable situations turn to as entertainment? Can we accept that this ambiguity serves as the basis for an economic model?
These questions need to be answered urgently. Youcef SISSAOUI / President of INAD
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