<![CDATA[SME marketing through social media expands market reach, but at the same time places consumer trust in the quality of promotional information and endorsement transparency. This article analyzes how information transparency and social media endorsement relate to digital brand trust, and how tadlis and gharar provide an ethical lens for reading SME promotion practices in Medan. The study employs a qualitative phenomenological approach. Primary data is limited to interviews with 10 informants as listed in the source manuscript; this article does not add new observations, citations, figures, or interview results. These primary data are read alongside verified secondary data: Medan in Figures 2024, APJII, BPS, DataReportal, regulations, and empirical research from 2020–2023. The synthesis results indicate that traceable product information, disclosure of commercial relationships, visual conformity with actual products, as well as clear terms for price, shipping, and returns are prerequisites for building trust. From a muamalah perspective, obscuring defects or quality is relevant to tadlis, while unclear specifications and transaction terms are relevant to gharar. The implication is that SMEs need to use a pre-upload transparency checklist and explicitly disclose endorsements. The main limitation is the limited size and detail of the source interview data; therefore, the findings are not intended to estimate prevalence across all SMEs in Medan.]]>
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