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Fake reviews are illegal and subject to big fines under new FTC rules
- metabagel 3y agoGood? But also, this seems kind of a big hammer to use?
- williamtrask 3y agoThe cost of fake reviews on society is subtle but may be high. And it’s too large of a scale for FTC to realistically pursue everyone. I suspect it needs to sound big and scary to work.
- parentheses 3y agoWas going to say this!
- version_five 3y agoI think it's better to try and educate people not to rely on reviews than to make "fake" reviews illegal. Lots of wasted resources in enforcement, and tons of ways to get around it allowing scammers to take advantage of naive consumers that think a law helps them.
- davidguetta 3y agoIt's not a so bad argument but honestly a few high profile case could have a nice chilling effect on the thousands of scammers on amazon
- vorpalhex 3y agoIt's called "deceptive business practices" because you're lying, in exchange for money, and pretending to endorse a product while not declaring you've been paid to do it - which is already prohibited.
- version_five 3y agoI'm amazed (or saddened) but not surprised at how averse people are to the idea of people thinking for themselves. Real life is not a computer, you can't just make rules and have them automatically work.
- anigbrowl 3y agoNobody is 'averse to thinking for themselves'. But there are millions of scientific and economic decisions made every day and it's unrealistic to expect everyone to fully vet all of them. Additionally, stupid people are gulible and easily preyed upon by the unscrupulous. It's not unreasonable to delegate product oversight to a government commission, whose opinions consumers can choose to seek/abide by, or not.
- oehpr 3y agoHow am I supposed to select a decent widget from the market? Buy them all? Think really hard about it? I do not understand your position at all.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoI am amazed (or saddened) but not surprised at how averse people are to the idea of people cleaning after themselves. Why do people expect a functioning sewage system, instead of traking their poop to the ocean themselves? Why do they expect the beach to be free of excrement, instead of cleaning it themselves? Why do they expect a recycling dystem to actually recycle plastic instead of defrauding them and dumping it in malasia? Well, then they also expect the reviews to be non-fraudulent?
- ezekiel68 3y agoHahaha Ha Ha Haha. Well, each year (in the US, at least) a fresh batch of aroun 4 million people turns 18 years old. Even if every one of them in a given year was completely convinced by this effort, that would leave the work undone for the inexorable flow of future young adult cohorts. I reckon all you've got to do to pull this off is to commandeer one of the two dominant political parties and hoist your educational agenda to the top of its political platform. You'll need to be super diligent to ensure that this influence extends down through the state, county, and municipal governments and is effectively implemented at all the local school districts. Not quite sure how to extend this to home schools. But otherwise, this is a splendid idea.
- paxys 3y ago> If the rules are approved, they’ll carry a big stick: a fine of up to $50,000 for each fake review, for each time a consumer sees it. Amazon may owe the FTC more money than the world's annual GDP.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoAnd thats just considering the reviews where they straight up admit they got the product free for a five star
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoi dont think that's considered a fake review. useless, yes.
- nvahalik 3y agoHow does the square with section 230 something?
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y agoAs far as I can see the site itself is mostly immune (Amazon, etc.). The fine applies to actors that solicit fake reviews.
- nighmi 3y agoI once bought socks on Amazon, which came with a note saying they would send me a free item for a good review. I then got a free electric kettle with another card. Then I got lenses which attach to a phone camera, a carjack, a foldable lawn chair, but the a raclette cheese melter didn't come with another card. Honestly, all fine products, nothing's broken etc. and I was very happy with such an amazing value for under $10. Werw they even fake reviews?
- ceejayoz 3y agoWere yours in particular fake? Maybe not. Does this cause people who might've given a four start review to bump it up to five? Probably. Does it mask the company later subbing in a cheapened, shittier version a few months later to float on the large number of five star reviews? Yes.
- aqme28 3y agoWhat does the FTC say about fake net neutrality comments?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoIt depends on if the reviews agree with the chairman's <s>employer</s> strongly held beliefs.
- choppaface 3y agoThat wing of the FTC wants to use a different penalty schedule. https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/05/15/fake_net_neutrality_comments_cost/ https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/05/15/fake_net_neutrali...
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoNot sure that's in the FTC's wheelhouse, but at least the New York Attorney General's office said they're worth $615K in fines to the firms that actually generated the comments (and not a cent from the megacorps that almost certainly hired them...) [1]. [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/12/ny-ag-doles-out-wrist-slap-fine-to-companies-that-helped-telecom-giants-use-fake-and-dead-people-to-lie-about-net-neutrality/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/12/ny-ag-doles-out-wrist-sl...
- true_north 3y agoHow about fake peer reviews for academic journals? https://www.nature.com/articles/546033a https://www.nature.com/articles/546033a
- tgv 3y agoReal reviewers also write fake-ish reviews. It's often sufficient to criticize minor points and rate it "not recommended for publication" to get a paper rejected. The more prestigious journals get so many submissions that a paper with one bad review doesn't stand a chance. It's a way to keep the competition down.
- Simulacra 3y agohttps://archive.is/dO7qG https://archive.is/dO7qG
- goodbyesf 3y agoWhat about corporate advertising? Where a celebrity is hired to promote product X which he never uses but still endorses it and even gives it a "fake review" in an ad? What's the difference between an ad and a fake review?
- version_five 3y agoYou mean George Clooney doesn't really drink Nespresso?! That's part of the point I made below, these kind of rules are so easy to skirt as to render them irrelevant. The law just becomes one more way that scammers can claim legitimacy.
- Simulacra 3y agoThis is the most important part: So how are they going to enforce this? The FTC says codifying rules can help it be much more efficient in court — but it isn’t actually getting any additional enforcement resources. It could also still face hurdles trying to go after offending businesses that are based overseas, if they’re in countries that don’t have a history of working with the FTC
- codetrotter 3y agoGood, I’m glad.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoWhat _effective_ means has the FTC exercised to regulate any dishonest behaviors, considering (wire fraud?) phone solicitor and text message spam is rampant in the US and has been supposedly regulated by FTC for years now?
- WalterBright 3y agoI would think Amazon would have more of an incentive to purge their site of counterfeits, fake reviews, etc., because training customers to not trust their site is going to hurt sales. And it'll be very hard to regain that trust.
- Blackthorn 3y agoI'm still wondering when that tipping point will happen. I've personally stopped using Amazon years ago for all those reasons and more. Somehow they still keep making more money than God.
- WalterBright 3y agoI buy stuff from Amazon all the time. Some products I won't buy from them. Sometimes I get something bad, and I just return it. Amazon is pretty good about accepting returns. Amazon saves me a great deal of time. Before Amazon, I'd have to spend 2 hours going to the mall and back, and face a very limited selection there. Now I spend 5 minutes and it drops on my doorstep, sometimes even that evening. Time means a lot to me. I'll put up with a lot to save time.
- cycomanic 3y agoThis is a weird comparison, there are other online vendors except for Amazon. In fact, one of the reasons I don't use Amazon is because I value my time, if I search for something specific e.g. a particular phone model, I don't want to wade through several pages of results with screen protectors. Amazon has the worst search of all online shops I know, by a huge margin.
- WalterBright 3y agoI prefer to buy electronics from newegg.com, but I have to wait for the deliveries.
- NavinF 3y agoYou kinda glossed over "it drops on my doorstep, sometimes even that evening". Only a few other sites (Costco+Instacart, Walmart, Apple, etc) offer same day delivery. Their search engines are almost as bad as Amazon's.
- gerdesj 3y ago"As many as 30 percent to 40 percent of online reviews are fabricated or otherwise not genuine," LOL. Put a decent or at least nearly decent product on sale on Amazon. Accrue positive reviews. Switch product to pile of cac. Positive reviews sell pile of shite. I do occasionally bother to leave a review for a product I have bought and I always specify it. Otherwise I am allowing Amazon to treat me and their other customers like a twat, which they do, with monotonous regularity. It would be nice if Amazon didn't treat me and everyone else as twats. They will continue to manage to make more money than pure avarice in its wildest dreams could contemplate. You do have to wonder what on earth happens at a board meeting in these monsters.
- fsckboy 3y ago>I do occasionally bother to leave a review for a product I have bought and I always specify it. specify what? that you bought it?
- Bawoosette 3y agoPresumably, they specify what the product was that they bought, in case the product listing is changed in the future.
- fsckboy 3y agoah, i gotcha
- Philip-J-Fry 3y agoProbably exactly what they bought. So when the item gets switched for something different, it stands out more.
- dotnet00 3y agoAmazon typically shows the review date, which helps with that sort of thing. I usually pay more attention to more recent reviews when assessing an item's quality.
- jostmey 3y agoWhy I don’t disagree with these proposed rules, I find it scary that a government agency outside of our elected officials has the power to enact these rules. I see this infringing on freedom of speech, but perhaps a lawyer would disagree with my opinion.
- radley 3y agoMaybe it's better to have rules crafted by experts. Do you want science based on charisma as well?
- anigbrowl 3y agogovernment agency outside of our elected officials The FTC commissioners are appointed by the President, an elected official. Congress creates government bodies as departments or commissions depending on whether it wants them to directly report to the executive or have some independence from it.
- thereisnospork 3y agoVery curious where the bar is for "fake". e.g. does selective review farming qualify? I can't count the number of apps that ask something to the effect of "do you like this app Yes/No" where "No" funnels to an internal feedback form and "Yes" to the play store review page. Including to my recollection first party google apps and other big name publishers/companies. To my opinion, 'of course' this should be illegal -- and I try and rate the apps that pull this crap a 1/5 when I stumble on to it.
- keernan 3y agoSo, "fake reviews" are not constitutionally protected free speech, but lies by politicians are?
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoCommercial speech has very weak protections compared to political speech. And fraud is never protected.
- indymike 3y agoAre reviews and opinions commercial speech?
- activiation 3y agoBusinesses are people according to the law so I don't know
- activiation 3y agoOnly Obama can lie
- activiation 3y agoI meant "Obama did lie"
- djur 3y agoYes, because political speech is protected more strongly than commercial speech.
- keernan 3y agoI'm aware of the legal distinctions (I'm an attorney)... it was my lament that America in 2023 protects commercial enterprise against false reviews while the very foundations of American democracy are crushed by coordinated lies by politicians. Brazil standing in marked contrast.
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- 6stringmerc 3y ago"Everybody knows reviews on the internet are fake or otherwise suspect." - Abraham Lincoln
- dvhh 3y agoI think the quote should be attributed to Moses
- olliej 3y agoIt’s bizarre that they weren’t already illegal under fraud or false advertising laws
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- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- Mystery-Machine 3y agoCan someone please change the title? It's not present tense, but future tense, with a big IF. The rules are no in place yet and it's not 100% that the rules will be put in place.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoYeah, the original source has a better title: "Federal Trade Commission Announces Proposed Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials"
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- amelius 3y agoFake headlines are not illegal.
- _8j50 3y ago2-4 star reviews is what I usually look for. 1 and 5 star reviews are typically fake or made by someone not properly evaluating all aspects of product and instead reacting to a bad/good experience.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago@dang Please consider changing the URL from this WaPo article to the original source: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/federal-trade-commission-announces-proposed-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/... "Federal Trade Commission Announces Proposed Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials"
- dredmorbius 3y agoFYI, "@dang" is a no-op: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36526450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36526450> To reach moderators, send email to hn@ycombintor.com Reference this post by URL or ID (36556228) in the subject line for faster processing, and the alternate URL you're suggesting in the body of your email along with a brief rationale, e.g., "link disambiguation". I usually do this myself, though in this case arguably WaPo are adding relevant commentary and analysis. That said the direct FTC link is useful to have in this thread.
- system2 3y agoSounds like a crazy amount of work for an online forum.
- dredmorbius 3y agoI'm trying to understand: sending an email is "a crazy amount of work"? What is your proposed alternative? How would that impact upon HN's own operations and resource demands?
- system2 3y agoThere could be a simple reporting function with a click of a button, type what's needed, then admin checks these reports from a simple page and take action. Way faster than sending an email from an email client, then opening it in another client, then going back to the website, login, check that specific issue with the copy/pasted links because it is in the email not in the reporting system. This is not 1990. All forum platforms have this function. (bb, vbulletin, discourse, etc.) I can't even understand why this is being discussed. :)
- exabrial 3y agoThe real problem is retailers and manufacturers are allowed to keep/display reviews if they significantly change the composition of the product. Everything should have a semver and reviews should be attached to a revision number.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoMaybe companies should be required to version prouducts a bit more carefully. As I understand it, it's possible to continue selling under the same product even after making changes to manufacturing techniques or materials. If you get a bunch of good reviews because you're using high quality materials, you can't just start selling a cheaper version under the same listing. I'm not sure how frequently this actually happens, but I've heard it claimed that it does happen.
- dredmorbius 3y agoWiping all review history for any product edit change might be one way to approach this.
- djtango 3y agoHaving worked in ecommerce that's incredibly hardcore even though I appreciate the sentiment. That will probably also disincentivise users from leaving reviews because users will see their reviews disappear. And actually what's to stop people changing a listing if they're not happy with the current set of reviews? Some kind of slick UI to highlight differences from current listing to previous listing for a review might be a solid scalable compromise
- dredmorbius 3y agoThe "disappearing reviews" issue might be mitigated by versioning the product entry, and preserving the old reviews for the old version of the listing.
- plagiarist 3y agoWhat about showing a thumbnail next to the review of how the product looked for the purchaser submitting a review? Break out averages per version. Show a diff between the total and the latest version. > Overall 4.7 stars: > [Photo of sock] 4.9 stars from 17,000 reviews "very comfy!" > [Photo of expensive electronics] 1.3 stars from 13 reviews "this garbage lit itself on fire."
- adrr 3y agoWhat about deleting negative reviews?
- LillianZhao90 3y ago[dead]
- mariakasia432 3y ago[dead]
- andrewstuart 3y agoThe only mechanism the USA has for influencing human behavior is criminalization.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dvhh 3y agoMore like hitting the wallet than criminalization
- deepsquirrelnet 3y agoIt’s probably worth considering how to collect evidence in order to file complaints.
- corn13read 3y ago[dead]
- pugworthy 3y agoI’ve been frustrated with Amazon and not being able to write reviews that mention the seller, as the seller can reject it as not being about the product. Of course if I say it’s a great seller, they will let it stay. But say it’s a bad seller? A couple of years ago I bought a speaker bar for my computer monitor. It hummed like crazy even when turned off. So I returned it and posted a 1 star review. Then the seller began to email with various “I’m just a little seller and this will hurt me” emails - despite there being thousands of reviews. Each email offered a progressively larger money offers to take my review down. Which I never took. It bugged me that I could not amend my review to note this. I could have I suppose, but it would have led to my actual product review being taken down.
- NavinF 3y agoYou can leave reviews on the seller's page, not just the product page
- DangitBobby 3y agoÀgain, why do we need new rules to prosecute fraud?
- ck2 3y agoSure it's a good thing but consumers need to start realizing everything is a lie. Every commercial on TV, radio and online is filled with lies and incomplete truths, missing facts, otherwise marketing people could never sell a single thing especially to valuable impulse buyers. Then there is the problem the FTC might have more power than the FDA with food and supplements. Every time any independent test is done pulling random products from random stores they never test accurate to what is listed on the label, even the dose size in single ingredient pills is always wrong unless it is USP Nutrition labels are completely self-reported and often very wrong. Why isn't that tested every single day by the government with big fines to stop it?
- HWR_14 3y agoYou need to distinguish food and supplements. Supplements frequently fail quality tests, but I'm not aware of food constantly being off. As to "Why isn't that tested every single day by the government with big fines to stop it?" in the supplement industry, it's because the FDA isn't allowed to regulate supplements by law.
- psuresh 3y agoLol. How can identity a review as fake if it is based on personal tastes and experience! True, unfounded allegations are fake reviews.
- indus 3y agoIs Glassdoor included?
- dvhh 3y agothis is an interesting point, I was more thinking along the line of digital goods like: - mobile phone applications: storefront (app store, google play) review are well known to be manipulated, and whatever is done to control the issue is clearly loosing. - video games: Steam is also well known to be a battleground for so-called review bombing and counter review bombing. Although Steam is very good at providing data to understand the context of the review, it clearly caters to a specific audience. Glassdoor is more egregious because of the anonymity it tries to provide for the reviewers and how authenticity and veracity o statement would be very difficult to assess.
- ec109685 3y agoMaybe one day they will ban fake products like this $49 1TB drive that corrupts your data: https://www.amazon.com/Gulloe-External-Storage-Computer-Blue/dp/B0BYXPWC4T/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3DYE9N9315OVW&keywords=flash+disk+1tb&qid=1688274923&sprefix=flash+disk%2Caps%2C778&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/Gulloe-External-Storage-Computer-Blue...
- asnyder 3y ago[flagged]
- dinkleberg 3y agoI wonder what impact this will have on joke reviews that people put on Amazon. From the article, it seems like this is just focused on the businesses themselves. But some products on Amazon, like famously the sugar free gummy bears, have people blow up the reviews with fake meme reviews.
- octacat 3y agoIt is yet another regulation which is sounds useful, but very hard to enforce. Starting with the fact that the seller always can say "we don't know anything, these reviews are left by the clients".
- sdwvit 3y agoGlassdoor is going to be in trouble if this is adopted. Glassdoor sells good reviews to companies as a pr tool.
- p3rls 3y agoI just got offered a "refund" to do a review where I got to keep the item a few days ago. The seller sent me the money in hours and it was easily the best customer service experience I've had on Amazon. Keep it up, you're doing great guys.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoHow does enforcement work? Without that, the rules mean nothing.
- hospitalJail 3y agoI'd me most interested in some sort of banning of false advertising or astroturfing. I think Apple and Samsung would be crippled.
- aczerepinski 3y agoWhat about collecting real reviews but deleting all the negative ones? (Crate & Barrel) Or harassing sellers to leave feedback for every sale when positive feedback is literally the only option (ebay).
- berniedurfee 3y agoI’m always surprised when a government agency throws the masses a bone like this given all the lobbying and cohabitation of big business and government. What’s the catch? Why would Amazon allow this?
- dinckelman 3y agoTook them long enough to realize. Not only a huge amount of review is fake, but a huge amount of products those reviews are under are also fake. If you browse anything on Amazon, you'll find dozens of completely identical items, with randomly generated Chinese names
- mancerayder 3y agoWill this include manipulated reviews? Take Airbnb, which became personal for me when I found out my reviews (of 3 and 4 stars) were edited or deleted. And where the last few Airbnb's were generally not good experiences (toilet requiring physically pushing stuff down, another one where bed was adjacent to wall with elevator machinery, another with 3 restaurants outside the ground floor courtyard including seating outside the house). I discovered that in the Airbnb subreddit, hosts have common tips for how to remove bad reviews. Easy, just say that it violates the guidelines because: "there is a complaint about something the host cannot control" That's it. It's that easy, and now information discovery by the consumer becomes difficult, as they see 4.8 star reviews with glowing positivity. I'm skeptical but that's what they need to crack down on, that grey area where you make fake/arbitrary guidelines for reviews and ONLY delete the negatives. Same thing happened to me on Amazon, I had pickling jars that all universally cracked in the fridge, and my review was deleted because it violated guidelines. It's not just a bot or fake sponsorship issue, it's also a biased sampling game: delete the negative, leave the positive.
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