User-generated content

In its original sense this covers anything made by the users of a platform, which is why YouTube, Reddit and every review site get described as user-generated content platforms.

Marketing has bent the phrase. A brand asking for UGC today usually means an advert shot on a phone, in the first person, made to look like a customer's own footage and paid for at a flat rate. The person hired often has no audience of their own, because what is being bought is the format. Both meanings are in circulation at once, so it pays to ask which one somebody means. Where it is the paid kind, disclosure rules apply the moment it runs as advertising.