18 ms·

FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

613 points by indus 2y ago

bragr 2y ago
Does the regulation say anything about deceptively moderating reviews? e.g. deleting all the low star reviews? edit: it doesn't seem so. You just have use some weasel language: >The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
- peteey 2y ago
  yes, "This final rule, among other things, prohibits [...] certain review suppression practices[...]" https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-no... Further down the notice cites the scenario: "[...] more than 4,500 merchants that were automatically publishing only 4- or 5-star consumer reviews"
  - kentlyons 2y ago
    The actual rule for this part is farther down. Section 465.7b (p161 of the pdf). My reading is basically if the website is showing something that it looks like all of the reviews, then those can't be filtered in this way. But that seems to leave open cherry picking reviews - eg don't imply you're showing them all. ... receiving and displaying consumer reviews represent most or all the reviews submitted to the website or platform when reviews are being suppressed (i.e., not displayable) based upon their ratings or their negative sentiment...
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  How does this stop one of the most common practices? * Step 1, take a product with a terrible rating * Step 2, create a new SKU for the exact same product so it has no ratings * Step 3, get a handful of fake 5-star reviews (in some way the FTC isn't going to crack down on) * Step 4, blast the old terribly reviewed product that now has good reviews on marketing * Step 5, get 10s of thousands of sales, $$$ * Step 6, let the terrible reviews pour in Repeat to step 1 (possibly under a different brand name).
  - soco 2y ago
    To all commenters quickly pointing out the ways this rule is far from perfect: you are completely right. This being clarified, is the alternative doing nothing? Because that's where we are.
    - maerF0x0 2y ago
      Well, I think where we are is having to prove its fraudulent. Agreed, impractically difficult.
    - conductr 2y ago
      When the FTC says "we're cracking down on online reviews" with things like this the average Joe gains more confidence in them, so yes, the doing nothing approach is actually better IMO.
      - maxerickson 2y ago
        So never do anything unless you can guarantee a particular outcome?
        conductr 2y ago
        That’s a stretch. But things like this only create a false illusion of safety/honesty which can actually be a tailwind for dishonesty.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  I guess manufacturers will now just have to reject anything other than a five star review immediately. As long as it is not submitted, it cannot be suppressed
  - popcalc 2y ago
    FINALLY a use for MangoDB https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb
    - sidewndr46 2y ago
      That lists a complexity of O(1) for all operations. I'm not sure that will scale. I expect my database to implement O(0) or lower complexity.
      - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
        Will you settle for O(sqrt(1))?
        anticensor 2y ago
        Square root of one is still one.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Come on, regulation can only go so far. The ruling is regarding third party review aggregators, a discussion about self hosted reviews is off-topic.
AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
> It also bans businesses from creating or selling reviews or testimonials. Businesses that knowingly buy fake reviews, procure them from company insiders or disseminate fake reviews will be penalized. It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.” Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"
- shkkmo 2y ago
  You are no longer allowrd to provide compensation for reviews. So companies can still send out stuff for your to possibly reviews but it can't make recieving items dependent on actually writing a review, even 'implicitly', though we'll see how enforcement shakes out.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    It will be impossible to enforce. The people who don't leave good reviews simply will get dropped from the mailing list. However, it forces the whole thing to kind of move underground, which should help at least reduce the scale of the problem, and creates a deterrent against getting too aggressive with it.
    - youworkwepay 2y ago
      And if enforced aggressively, will only provide a set up for false flag operations to get a competitor banned for fake reviews. I think we've already seen this movie in SEO....
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        The evidentiary standards for Google search ranking changes is VERY different than the one used for FTC enforcement actions. I'm pretty sure getting caught for trying to frame a company for buying reviews would bring criminal charges that are more serious than the FTC enforcement action.
gniv 2y ago
The press release from FTC containing the entire rule: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
Simulacra 2y ago
I went to a salon recently and was told I could get 10% off by leaving a 5 star review BEFORE I received any service. That is something I really hate and I wish review sites monitored for that more. Would this be the same thing as buying reviews?
- vkou 2y ago
  Leave a review, get the service, edit the review later.
- CapmCrackaWaka 2y ago
  The number of establishments I have seen doing this has skyrocketed. The last 2, I edited my review afterwards to 1 star and saying “this place gives a discount for good reviews”.
  - bena 2y ago
    I mean, I would just leave. Because I'm not going to leave a review, don't really leave many reviews. But I'm especially not going to leave a review before I've received service. But if I don't leave a review, I'd be concerned I would be getting deliberately poor service. And if I'm going to get bad service, why should I subject myself to that? If anything, I would leave then give a 1 star review saying they give discounts to people who give good reviews beforehand and the explanation I gave above.
    - datavirtue 2y ago
      And they delete your review. There needs to be a requirement to archive all reviews for seven-ten years. When it was posted, how long it was up, content and user. This is such a rabbit hole. People cheer when government makes a rule like this but there is a huge costly enforcement mechanism that goes with this. That has to be implemented and maintained. Making the rule is step one, and there are hundreds more steps that have to happen any number of times, forever. Good luck. Making laws that cannot be enforced just increases the cost of government without having the intended effect. I can't think of anything that the prime offenders would like more than that.
jsheard 2y ago
Do testimonials count as reviews? Bad news for all the product launches I see on here which are endorsed by 10 unidentifiable "people" with abbreviated surnames and suspiciously stock-photo-ish headshots, if so.
- alok-g 2y ago
  Hoping it should. When real, testimonials are hand-picked from the full set of reviews and feedback. That practice should be banned too. Of course, creation of rules would do only so much. The real deal is ability to execute those in practice.
fny 2y ago
Unfortunately, this rule excludes most of the fake reviews that plague Amazon. There are a lot of outfits in Pakistan that recruit reviewers in the US by offering a full refund for Chinese products in exchange for a five star review. This rule should require disclosure of this behavior and frankly any review that does not originate for a bonafide purchase.
- quercusa 2y ago
  I recently bought a $9 TV antenna that promised a $50 Amazon gift card for a five-star review.
  - xmly 2y ago
    Where to get this deal?
    - quercusa 2y ago
      Seller was ETBRJTK (known for their quality and honesty!)
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    That is a dirt cheap acquisition cost.
- 1986 2y ago
  The rule covers this > Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed. > Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.
brandonmenc 2y ago
Next can we ban 1-star reviews that just complain about the shipping and not the product itself?
- dylan604 2y ago
  Why, if you're thinking of buying the product from the same vendor, would you not reconsider buying from a different vendor just for shipping issues? Shipping is a major part of buying something online, so I don't think it's a bad review to have available
  - kbolino 2y ago
    It's a review of the process or the seller, not the product. That having been said, Amazon and most similar online retail "marketplaces" make the seller much less visible than the product, encouraging the reviews to go in the wrong place.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      I like how you've reduced the entire internet to just Amazon. It is possible to have reviews on other websites. I know they really try to keep that a secret though.
  - ars 2y ago
    If UPS put the package by your neighbor, switching vendors doesn't really do anything. Or if you bought from a third party seller, but your review is attached to an FBA product, the shipping review has nothing to do with the current item.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      >If UPS put the package by your neighbor, switching vendors doesn't really do anything. Switching to a seller that ships using fedex or usps would do something. We've had the inverse problem, fedex is the one that always screws up our deliveries and we actively look for sellers that don't use them.
barryrandall 2y ago
The review suppression rule is hilarious. The intent seems to be to prevent people from using asymmetric access to the legal system to bully reviewers into removing reviews they don't like. The remedy? The thing the law was trying to prevent.
- XCabbage 2y ago
  I don't understand this cryptic hinting. What's wrong with the rule, and what thing that the law was trying to prevent does the rule mandate as a remedy?
mmooss 2y ago
> the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience. Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience". They may mean that businesses can't engage people to write such reviews. Also, how will they handle the scale of enforcement? The large companies seem easy - one enforcement action covers all of Yelp, another all of Amazon, etc. But what about the infinite reviews at smaller vendoers? Overall though, I think this is great and long past due. The lawlessness of the Internet - fraud, spying, etc. - is absurd.
- bilekas 2y ago
  > Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience" Maybe I'm wrong but doesn't the first ammended apply to public speech ? Is there some nuances there when a private company is involved and responsible for the content on their platform, in this case reviews? Genuinely never sure of these things for the US.
  - acdha 2y ago
    It does, but this isn’t personal speech but corporate. I can say that buying an iPhone makes me smarter and irresistibly attractive and it’s covered by the first amendment, but it becomes corporate speech once Apple pays me to say that and is thus subject regulation about honesty and disclosure. This is noticeable in ads for things like athletic products – even if it’s a pro athlete they very publicly sponsor, the claims tend to be things like saying they only run in those shoes or some sports drink is part of their training because they don’t want a legal situation because it sounded too much like “Nike said I could run a 4 minute mile if I bought their shoe!” Review curation is an especially good target for this because the question isn’t the speech but rather whose speech is promoted. Nobody gets in trouble if they accept testimonials and only use positive ones in ads because consumers know those aren’t unbiased but a review page which looks like anyone can post there is making a different promise.
maerF0x0 2y ago
Is there something about the American system such that the FTC is more active/aggressive during Democrat office? Anyone else notice this trend? If it's real what causes it?
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  Of course. The chair of the FTC is a political position so changes with each administration. Very broadly, US Democrats are more in favor of regulation to stop abuses and US Republicans are more ‘hands off, the market will sort it out’ in their approach.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    With the FTC in particular, neither party wanted the FTC to be aggressive. Biden wanted to appoint someone else but had all his appointments blocked by the far-right. Lina Khan got in because populists (left and right) saw her as a weapon that could be wielded against Big Tech. There's actually a big cloud hanging over the Kamala Harris candidacy over whether or not Lina Khan will remain FTC chair. There's a lot of tech money flooding into her campaign. Though in this case it's also to replace the current SEC chair, because the SEC chair is actually enforcing securities law against crypto fraudsters, who would really like to keep their scam going. Same with Trump. Big Tech banned him for, y'know, instigating a coup d'etat. But three years later, Big Tech is now trying to wine and dine him, because the FTC is scaring the shit out of Big Tech. You have Tim Cook going to Trump and Trump saying how he's going to stop the EU from attacking US companies. Hell, Elon Musk bought Twitter just so he could turn it into an arm of the Trump candidacy. And who knows what Mark Zuckerberg thinks. Likewise, with the SEC stuff, Trump used to be a (rightful) big critic of crypto, until he realized he could make money selling tacky NFTs of himself, and is now also trying to get in on that crypto money.
    - know-how 2y ago
      [dead]
- sidewndr46 2y ago
cptnapalm 2y ago
Wouldn't this make the glorious reviews for the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer illegal? I mean this thing has saved and ended marriages, enabled people to live their dreams of starting zydeco bands, started the boomerang pigeon hunting craze, and much more. https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/product-reviews/B0047E0EII/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/produc...
- mandibles 2y ago
  Ah, the days when the Internet was fun.
- efreak 2y ago
  Amazon no longer let's you see reviews that aren't on the main product listing without logging in. You can see the top reviews and the most recent reviews, and that's it; navigating to the page you linked or clicking one of the star ratings (see all 5 star reviews or all 1 star reviews) prompts a login.
burningChrome 2y ago
>> > the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience. I guess they don't know about how people scam Amazon reviews by getting legit people to simply buy the product and leave a five star review and then get reimbursed for their purchase later by the company or the company the company hired to get these people to do this. (From 2022) Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-market/ https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Of course they know. One thing at a time.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    Especially now that literally anything the FTC does could be struck down by a federal judge at any time, unless it is explicitly written out or delegated legislation.
- WesternWind 2y ago
  Actually that's covered by the rule. Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed.
  - LinuxBender 2y ago
    I hope this is actively enforced with real teeth very soon. I 1-star fake products and call them out in reviews resulting in the devious vendor somehow being able to send me a postcard to my real physical address offering money for 5 stars. The sham vendor also spam my email weekly. Amazon appears to actively support this process. It needed to be curtailed decades ago.
onemoresoop 2y ago
Good intentions by FTC. Unfortunately nearly impossible to enforce. It's almost like FTC banning junk/spam emails. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this will be enforced and some big players will end up paying large fines. I think Amazon has to get their poop together and fix the comingling product reviews and other ways through their sieve that make this behavior rampant.
- diggan 2y ago
  How is it impossible to enforce? Bunch of people report Amazon as being rife with fake reviews. FTC puts together some sort of working group that does some research to figure out if it's true. If it's true, they reach out to Amazon telling them to fix it after handing them a fine. After a while, they verify that Amazon implemented sufficient safe-guards against fake reviews. Sure, it wouldn't get rid of all fake reviews, but surely it'd be better than the current approach of doing absolutely nothing, no?
  - onemoresoop 2y ago
    How can you enforce people giving fake reviews for things they bought? Bring the review police? How can you prove they're given free products to review them positively? Don't get me wrong, I wish online reviews weren't utterly broken but it seems like business wants it this way. I certainly hope this will get fixed and not jump to the next loophole.
    - consteval 2y ago
      > business wants it this way Of course they want it. It's purely objective for them and purely deceptive to the consumer. Therefore, it's the perfect thing for the FTC to regulate - I mean this is what their purpose is. Enforcement will be difficult, but I really think platforms like Amazon isn't the problem. They're a unified platform, it's pretty easy for them to enforce better review. Maybe you need to have actually bought the product, maybe they monitor product descriptions for asking for reviews, maybe they audit packages for those little "review us 5 stars!" slips, maybe they prevent modifying products, etc. The true tough thing to enforce is little shops. You know, convenience stores, smoke shops, that type. I've been told, verbally, many times that if I review 5 stars, I get some discount. I doubt the FTC will send physical agents to check that.
xmly 2y ago
Good, but HOW?
binarymax 2y ago
Don’t worry, a judge in Texas in the pocket of some big company will shoot this down, just like the attempt to abolish non-competes
- renegade-otter 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - stronglikedan 2y ago
    > the SCOTUS judges are the de facto experts of all matters and the regulators And thankfully so.
    - kccoder 2y ago
      Curious why you think these nine individuals are better suited than people with actual expertise? In the ruling in which they self-ordained these new powers, Gorsuch confused nitrous oxide with nitrogen oxide, five times. Better hope Gorsuch didn't rule on dental anesthetics on your next visit to the dentist. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-courts-contempt-for-facts-is-a-betrayal-of-justice/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-court...
      - consumer451 2y ago
        Especially since one of the main arguments I have heard from folks who approve of the ruling is "but these agency people are un-elected officials!" So are Supreme Court Justices, who unlike agency people have no ethics rules.
      - Ajedi32 2y ago
        Because allowing the "people with actual expertise" to decide for themselves how much power they have over the lives of others is a blatantly obvious conflict of interest?
        2y ago
nubinetwork 2y ago
Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41911915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41911915
datavirtue 2y ago
Great, this solves for all the small players. What about big tech. They will just have to ignore this ruling.
rachofsunshine 2y ago
If you don't have the time to thoroughly investigate material non-public information before deciding where to have lunch, are you even a responsible consumer? /s The normalization of blatant lying in business is really frustrating, both as a businessperson and as a member of the public. We (correctly) consider just making shit up for their own benefit a major strike against a person, but we implicitly tolerate it in the companies that run a good chunk of our lives! Hell, in some cases we even celebrate it: "wow, look how scrappy that person is, what a brilliant marketing ploy!" - no, they're just a liar.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  There seems to be a LOT of normalization of straight up lies, made-up-on-the-spot facts, and disinformation the past 6-8 years. Caveat emptor seems to be the SOP rather than a reminder to be skeptical. Of course, that's just my n=1 observation.
alsetmusic 2y ago
Historic date 2024-10-21: the last time anyone lied in a review. I’m glad they’re trying. It remains to be seen how this’ll sort out.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  People can break laws. By your logic I guess we shouldn't have laws then.
  - rs999gti 2y ago
    > People can break laws. By your logic I guess we shouldn't have laws then. Let me reverse this on you, how much and what type of punishment and penalty should be levied if laws are broken? Like this false online reviews ruling, how far should punishment and penalty go?
    - DrillShopper 2y ago
      > how much and what type of punishment and penalty should be levied if laws are broken? Depends on the impact of the crime the person was convicted of and how likely they are to do it again. > how far should punishment and penalty go? For companies who knowingly solicit or publish fake/compensated reviews: disgorgement of profits and refunds without conditions to everyone who asks. Repeated violations come with escalating fines that are a percentage of revenue (not profits) plus bans on company officers holding the position of officer of a publicly traded company for a number of years.
BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
Hopefully this part fixes the Amazon review problem, because it lets them go after Amazon itself... > It also prohibits them from ... disseminating such testimonials, when the business ... should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false. Many of the Amazon fake review practices are extremely in the "should have known" category.
6510 2y ago
It all seems quite simple to me. Just require an order number and the date of purchase to write a review and require all reviews be publicly available in a machine readable format and that anyone may publish them. If you pay me I can write the same using 1000 pages without adding anything useful.
- alok-g 2y ago
  >> Just require an order number ... This does not solve the problem. Fake reviewers often purchase the product on paper. Behind the scenes, the seller may not even ship and instead buy fake shipment tracking from the shipping company. This is much more complex than what you are thinking.
  - 6510 2y ago
    You are right, my suggestion involves the lowest hanging fruit where one can purchase unlimited positive or negative reviews from unrelated parties. I can google a far away barber who has accumulated 17 reviews over the last 10 years. Google then allows me to shit talk the guy for the world to see. 2 minutes of effort and its free! They get to carry it around like a badge of shame forever. You should give me a discount or ill post a negative review and unleash the roaches on your hotel. It would be rude if you didn't. edit: I think a digital ID would be useful for real reviews.
    - alok-g 2y ago
      Indeed. Both sides, product/service providers and consumers, try to game the system. That makes it very hard to figure what is the truth.
whiplash451 2y ago
If the product is fake too, does a fake review count?
sarajevo 2y ago
Do you think there will be any impact on sites like HN?
kazinator 2y ago
The first thing you have to do is ban USA-based online marketplace companies from hosting foreign vendors. Then you can better regulate what is left.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Or you can hold the marketplace companies responsible for whoever markets on them. Of course can't hold foreign marketplaces responsible at all - but that is a different loophole we can close (if it becomes a problem Amazon will ensure it is)
  - Thinkx220 2y ago
    Why should a foreign marketplace get the same benefit of the doubt as a domestic market? Especially if those foreign markets belong to countries that are hostile to mine?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      the us government cannot directly do anything about foreign markets.
      - Thinkx220 2y ago
        We could easily restrict them from selling in the US
        bluGill 2y ago
        Not easially. Shipping to the US is not hard, and the post office / customs doesn't know what company is sending things. Customs can check of course, but for small value packages they typically do not, so long as the import forms look somewhat reasonable and the import taxes are paid they generally are not looking that close. It is even harder if someone knows they are an illegal company as then they put a false return address on the package and there is no easy way to track them down. Regular people are not someone custom wants to make an example of for ordering from a banned foreign company. Large companies will carefully check their supply chain to ensure they are not buying goods from banned companies, but tiny companies and regular people won't care as much. I expect that the EU will have (if they don't already have) rules similar to the US and countries there will generally enforce them. However other countries (China!) will not care as much.
tabbott 2y ago
I hope the FTC staffs a large office for enforcement on this. There are surely many hundreds of companies in the business of selling fake reviews, many of them outside the US, and I don't expect much change in the consumer reality of "most reviews are fake" without a great deal of investigatory effort tracing money flows to shut these operations down.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Amazonz doooomed
capital_guy 2y ago
Amazing all the newfound lawyers in the HN section here pointing out "loopholes" in the rule and then getting corrected by the next commenter. The FTC continues to do the good, thankless work of making good public policy. I appreciate it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  But did the FTC think about this loophole that I just thought of in three seconds? I am so smart!
- barryrandall 2y ago
  It's almost like they expect the law to be dysfunctional or unevenly applied.
- tqi 2y ago
  Do you expect that a year from now (or two, or however long you think is a fair amount of time to pass), online reviews will be noticeably better/more useful than they are today? I think the underlying thread here is that most people don't expect this to be any more effective than anti-spam or anti-robocalling calling rules.
  - behringer 2y ago
    Probably, yes. And by the by, I get significantly less spam and phone calls than I used to. Vastly fewer and they're all clearly scams now, which makes it easy to ignore.
  - someothherguyy 2y ago
    I'd be surprised if the next administration doesn't remove the rule.
- m463 2y ago
  > The FTC It seems to me the FTC under Lina Khan. Before that I just don't remember it having so much pro-consumer impact.
EasyMark 2y ago
I've had decent results with fakespot and not buying anything lower than a B rating, with a very few exceptions (not enough reviews for example). I think with a little digilence my Amazon experience has gotten better the past few years since I don't just buy the first cheapest thing that pops up because I'm in a hurry.
- imiric 2y ago
  What makes you trust that Fakespot and sites like it are themselves not compromised? I've had similar success by manually avoiding items that look suspicious in any way, and only buying from Amazon directly, or known reputable sellers. This takes _a lot_ of work, and makes shopping on Amazon exhausting, but I don't see how Fakespot would make this any easier. My problem is not so much detecting fake reviews, but filtering out the possible quality items from the sea of junk copycats. It often happens that entire categories of items consist of junk, and you have no other choice but to pick the least worse one. Sometimes you get unlucky, but thankfully Amazon still has good return policies to cover these cases, so it's not a total loss. The amount of returns they process must be insane. Come to think of it, I'd really like an AI-powered service that acts as an interface to Amazon search, and does this filtering for me. Bonus points for improving search criteria and allowing filtering by country of origin, ranking reputable brands and sellers higher, etc. Since Amazon will never build this, someone please do!
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I trust them because they are owned by Mozilla, and I’ve had good results vs my own random judgement of reviews. I’m probably 95% good and I get most of my stuff from Amazon these days. I do trust my gut feeling as much though and have ignored their grade on what seemed an okay purchase.
nottorp 2y ago
So... wasn't this fraud even before and thus covered in some penal code section?
- bombcar 2y ago
  There’s a line between fraud and first they’re trying to navigate. Suppressing speech in the USA is notoriously hard, but can be done if targeted narrowly enough.
  - alok-g 2y ago
    Thanks. Now I understand the significance of the ruling better. Love this. I am in general interested in seeing free speech being replaced by truthful or well-intentioned speech. Fact-checking is hard, and GenAI is making this worse. In my opinion, it is time to reevaluate the notion of free speech.
notinmykernel 2y ago
Amazon must be quaking in their boots.
skeeterbug 2y ago
This spring our one year old de-humidifier died. The manufacturer would send you a new replacement unit, but first you had to leave a review of the new unit. After the review was submitted, they would send you an Amazon gift card with the replacement value. So the old units that died never get a 1 star, and the new units being "sold" are getting 5 stars. I guess it is still better than most companies that will find whatever reason they can not to replace faulty equipment.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  You can edit reviews on Amazon. So absolutely go through that process, and once you've spent the gift card, edit your review to 1 star and explain why. Because that's disgusting corporate behavior.
kebsup 2y ago
While making an app, I'm learning what other people in the industry are doing. One piece of "advice" is to put AppStore/play store rating dialog in the onboarding. The case studies show that it indeed improves the reviews by a lot, because people simply rate 5 stars just to get through onboarding.
mk_chan 2y ago
Officially banning fake reviews to introduce liability is a good start, but the real challenge with reviews is the incentive structure. For positive reviews, a business will figure out customers who they already know had a positive experience (quick delivery, continuous usage, etc) and only send them invites to review. This is perfectly legal and the fundamental business model of many review websites - selling the ability to push invites and “manage” reviews. For negative reviews - no business wants these, and customers with bad experiences are likely to post them by themselves. What gets left out is the average experience because reviews are essentially cherry picked from the head and tail ends of the normal curve of experiences. This doesn’t render reviews useless, of course. Having a large number of positive reviews is still a positive signal but it is nowhere close to free from manipulation.
- david422 2y ago
  When iOS + apps came out, Apple had a system whereby when an app got uninstalled it prompted the user for a star rating and review. Guess who was doing all the uninstalling? People that hated the apps, and app ratings reflected that.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I think we ought to be focusing not on whether it was "real", but on whether it was written by somebody that the user trusts (or maybe there are n trust-hops between reviewer and user). That way users have recourse when they're misled: they can revoke trust in whichever connection exposed them to the misleading review. Eventually the scammers will be isolated such that they're just paying each other to lie to each other, meanwhile the rest of us can be authentic with each other: we need to learn trust hygiene and bake it into our apps.
- DylanDmitri 2y ago
  I would love a restaurant review site that could tell you “your brother’s friend from college has been here once and liked it”.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I'd definitely use that, though I'd prefer a social graph protocol which restaurant pages just sort of tap into, rather than having a dedicated site. That way we can use the same trust graph for many applications rather than having the restaurant review graph be separate from the scientific peer review graph which is separate from the trusted mechanic review graph etc...
redmajor12 2y ago
Is this law going to penalize Amazon for not doing the very trivial amount of policing to block AI generated reviews on their site? AI review content is still obvious and Amazon must still benefit from it just as much as all their other dark patterns.
paul7986 2y ago
Also, what about deepfake images, videos and the tons of AI generated trash flooding YouTube? Its interesting to see the government stepping to make the industry around fake reviews to be illegal .. possibly the next step in five to ten years is the government saving the INternet from the onslaught of all the AI generated fake crap that's only going to get worse and worse.
nojvek 2y ago
Love FTC’s momentum in building fair trustable free markets.
kwar13 2y ago
I hope there's enforcement here. I mean just look at this garbage: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeogaeaoehlefnkodbefgpgknn?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeog... I once tried reporting these blatant phishing reviews, but apparently on Google the only way to report a review is if it's "Child sexual abuse material" if it's "policy related" and only "court order" or "intellectual property" if it's legal related. It's a wholy unsatisfactory system riddled with garbage.
- ankleturtle 2y ago
  Reporting to Google is generally useless. Skim these search results. https://www.google.com/maps/search/deck+builder+chicago/ https://www.google.com/maps/search/deck+builder+chicago/ The a large percentage of these listings are fake. They're run by a single company who has blanketed Chicago with "lead generation" listings across several local service business industries. You can report them to Google. Nothing gets done most of the time. Redressal form? Same thing. Escalate on the forums? Same result. And this is only one such lead gen network that I know of. Google doesn't care.
pmarreck 2y ago
Has anyone else gotten a tremendous number of people approaching them online on various platforms seeking people to work as fake review submitters? I always respond with open disgust and admonition, just wondering if it's just me
refurb 2y ago
Ok, it now banned. I guess my next question is - so what? Without an enforcement mechanism to monitor the millions of review websites nothing will happen. And can you imagine the effort required to prove a review is fake?
wuming2 2y ago
So The Shed at Dulwich could not exist on TripAdvisor US and Botto Bistro could not be punished by Yelp?
alfiedotwtf 2y ago
How do they enforce price this?
alok-g 2y ago
Two questions: Does this apply retroactively? If someone is found to have written fake reviews or paid to get them written in the past, would the rule apply to them too? (I hope so.) Can the rule be imposed if the culprits are all outside the US? (Even if the E-commerce player is in the US, they may not (or may) have done anything wrong intentionally.)
whoitwas 2y ago
This sort of regulation seems oddly granular and not super useful, but not terrible. Companies don't have to offer customer review features. I wonder what would happen if companies decided to remove reviews, rebrand, or switch to another paradigm?
- acdha 2y ago
  I think the possible changes you mentioned are a desired outcome. The FTC’s consumer protection role tends to be about keeping free markets functional, and under Biden that’s had a lot of focus on removing market distortions. Reviews are tricky that way because people want to trust other buyers but scammers have exploited that trust, and a company removing the reviews section of their site because they don’t want them to be accurate seems like a net win similar to forcing companies to remove false claims. The FTC doesn’t require your product to be good, just honestly sold.
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    My objection is it's too granular and bad faith operators will only pivot slightly to continue to exploit. It seems ineffective.
whoitwas 2y ago
It's semi-comical that the subtitle contains "AI-Generated". Even gov is on the hype train.
avsteele 2y ago
I'll believe it when its enforced. The spam calls I'm getting are 'banned' to, for all the good it does.
Zobat 2y ago
> Specifically, the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence This seems a bit redundant, doesn't it?
anymouse123456 2y ago
Feels like they sort of buried the lede here with this little thing hanging off the back: > It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations. It seems to me like most litigants believe the other case to be groundless. I'm curious how this will look from an enforcement perspective.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
Sadly, this may mean the end of such literary gems, as "Hell Holds No Surprises For Me Anymore": https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZFIYJTPVUZ94?ASIN=B000EVOSE4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZFIYJTPVUZ94?ASI...
- asne11 2y ago
  Ok I'll bite... What am I looking at?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    It's a farcical "review" of Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bears. At some point, it was determined that the sweetener (or something) in these, caused ... adverse ... reactions, in some folks. If you look at all the reviews for that product, you will see many more, but this was the prize-winner. Actually, I suspect that the ratings went to a different (sugared) product, or that Amazon moved the products around, so the ratings applied to something different. The sugar-free variety was the problematic one.
- burnished 2y ago
  Nope, doesn't look like it'll stop you personally from leaving silly reviews.
neycoda 2y ago
Wow this will affect a lot of product owners I've known
devikapriya917 2y ago
[dead]
moribunda 2y ago
Shouldn't this be the link - not some 5-sentence summary? https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/... It would make many comments here pointless if commenters started from reading this: The final rule prohibits: Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false. Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed. Insider Reviews and Consumer Testimonials: The final rule prohibits certain reviews and testimonials written by company insiders that fail to clearly and conspicuously disclose the giver’s material connection to the business. It prohibits such reviews and testimonials given by officers or managers. It also prohibits a business from disseminating such a testimonial that the business should have known was by an officer, manager, employee, or agent. Finally, it imposes requirements when officers or managers solicit consumer reviews from their own immediate relatives or from employees or agents – or when they tell employees or agents to solicit reviews from relatives and such solicitations result in reviews by immediate relatives of the employees or agents. Company-Controlled Review Websites: The final rule prohibits a business from misrepresenting that a website or entity it controls provides independent reviews or opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services. Review Suppression: The final rule prohibits a business from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review. The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment. Misuse of Fake Social Media Indicators: The final rule prohibits anyone from selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or hijacked account. This prohibition is limited to situations in which the buyer knew or should have known that the indicators were fake and misrepresent the buyer’s influence or importance for a commercial purpose.
sandramcghee415 2y ago
[dead]
nikolay 2y ago
I can't rely on marketplaces doing a decent job at this - that's why I use Fakespot [0] by Mozilla! [0]: https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/

613 points by indus 2y ago

Does the regulation say anything about deceptively moderating reviews? e.g. deleting all the low star reviews? edit: it doesn't seem so. You just have use some weasel language: >The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

peteey 2y ago
yes, "This final rule, among other things, prohibits [...] certain review suppression practices[...]" https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-no... Further down the notice cites the scenario: "[...] more than 4,500 merchants that were automatically publishing only 4- or 5-star consumer reviews"
- kentlyons 2y ago
  The actual rule for this part is farther down. Section 465.7b (p161 of the pdf). My reading is basically if the website is showing something that it looks like all of the reviews, then those can't be filtered in this way. But that seems to leave open cherry picking reviews - eg don't imply you're showing them all. ... receiving and displaying consumer reviews represent most or all the reviews submitted to the website or platform when reviews are being suppressed (i.e., not displayable) based upon their ratings or their negative sentiment...
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
How does this stop one of the most common practices? * Step 1, take a product with a terrible rating * Step 2, create a new SKU for the exact same product so it has no ratings * Step 3, get a handful of fake 5-star reviews (in some way the FTC isn't going to crack down on) * Step 4, blast the old terribly reviewed product that now has good reviews on marketing * Step 5, get 10s of thousands of sales, $$$ * Step 6, let the terrible reviews pour in Repeat to step 1 (possibly under a different brand name).
- soco 2y ago
  To all commenters quickly pointing out the ways this rule is far from perfect: you are completely right. This being clarified, is the alternative doing nothing? Because that's where we are.
  - maerF0x0 2y ago
    Well, I think where we are is having to prove its fraudulent. Agreed, impractically difficult.
  - conductr 2y ago
    When the FTC says "we're cracking down on online reviews" with things like this the average Joe gains more confidence in them, so yes, the doing nothing approach is actually better IMO.
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      So never do anything unless you can guarantee a particular outcome?
      - conductr 2y ago
        That’s a stretch. But things like this only create a false illusion of safety/honesty which can actually be a tailwind for dishonesty.
sidewndr46 2y ago
I guess manufacturers will now just have to reject anything other than a five star review immediately. As long as it is not submitted, it cannot be suppressed
- popcalc 2y ago
  FINALLY a use for MangoDB https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    That lists a complexity of O(1) for all operations. I'm not sure that will scale. I expect my database to implement O(0) or lower complexity.
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      Will you settle for O(sqrt(1))?
      - anticensor 2y ago
        Square root of one is still one.
TZubiri 2y ago
Come on, regulation can only go so far. The ruling is regarding third party review aggregators, a discussion about self hosted reviews is off-topic.

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago

> It also bans businesses from creating or selling reviews or testimonials. Businesses that knowingly buy fake reviews, procure them from company insiders or disseminate fake reviews will be penalized. It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.” Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"

shkkmo 2y ago
You are no longer allowrd to provide compensation for reviews. So companies can still send out stuff for your to possibly reviews but it can't make recieving items dependent on actually writing a review, even 'implicitly', though we'll see how enforcement shakes out.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  It will be impossible to enforce. The people who don't leave good reviews simply will get dropped from the mailing list. However, it forces the whole thing to kind of move underground, which should help at least reduce the scale of the problem, and creates a deterrent against getting too aggressive with it.
  - youworkwepay 2y ago
    And if enforced aggressively, will only provide a set up for false flag operations to get a competitor banned for fake reviews. I think we've already seen this movie in SEO....
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      The evidentiary standards for Google search ranking changes is VERY different than the one used for FTC enforcement actions. I'm pretty sure getting caught for trying to frame a company for buying reviews would bring criminal charges that are more serious than the FTC enforcement action.

gniv 2y ago

The press release from FTC containing the entire rule: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

Simulacra 2y ago

I went to a salon recently and was told I could get 10% off by leaving a 5 star review BEFORE I received any service. That is something I really hate and I wish review sites monitored for that more. Would this be the same thing as buying reviews?

vkou 2y ago
Leave a review, get the service, edit the review later.
CapmCrackaWaka 2y ago
The number of establishments I have seen doing this has skyrocketed. The last 2, I edited my review afterwards to 1 star and saying “this place gives a discount for good reviews”.
- bena 2y ago
  I mean, I would just leave. Because I'm not going to leave a review, don't really leave many reviews. But I'm especially not going to leave a review before I've received service. But if I don't leave a review, I'd be concerned I would be getting deliberately poor service. And if I'm going to get bad service, why should I subject myself to that? If anything, I would leave then give a 1 star review saying they give discounts to people who give good reviews beforehand and the explanation I gave above.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    And they delete your review. There needs to be a requirement to archive all reviews for seven-ten years. When it was posted, how long it was up, content and user. This is such a rabbit hole. People cheer when government makes a rule like this but there is a huge costly enforcement mechanism that goes with this. That has to be implemented and maintained. Making the rule is step one, and there are hundreds more steps that have to happen any number of times, forever. Good luck. Making laws that cannot be enforced just increases the cost of government without having the intended effect. I can't think of anything that the prime offenders would like more than that.

jsheard 2y ago

Do testimonials count as reviews? Bad news for all the product launches I see on here which are endorsed by 10 unidentifiable "people" with abbreviated surnames and suspiciously stock-photo-ish headshots, if so.

alok-g 2y ago
Hoping it should. When real, testimonials are hand-picked from the full set of reviews and feedback. That practice should be banned too. Of course, creation of rules would do only so much. The real deal is ability to execute those in practice.

fny 2y ago

Unfortunately, this rule excludes most of the fake reviews that plague Amazon. There are a lot of outfits in Pakistan that recruit reviewers in the US by offering a full refund for Chinese products in exchange for a five star review. This rule should require disclosure of this behavior and frankly any review that does not originate for a bonafide purchase.

quercusa 2y ago
I recently bought a $9 TV antenna that promised a $50 Amazon gift card for a five-star review.
- xmly 2y ago
  Where to get this deal?
  - quercusa 2y ago
    Seller was ETBRJTK (known for their quality and honesty!)
- datavirtue 2y ago
  That is a dirt cheap acquisition cost.
1986 2y ago
The rule covers this > Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed. > Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.

brandonmenc 2y ago

Next can we ban 1-star reviews that just complain about the shipping and not the product itself?

dylan604 2y ago
Why, if you're thinking of buying the product from the same vendor, would you not reconsider buying from a different vendor just for shipping issues? Shipping is a major part of buying something online, so I don't think it's a bad review to have available
- kbolino 2y ago
  It's a review of the process or the seller, not the product. That having been said, Amazon and most similar online retail "marketplaces" make the seller much less visible than the product, encouraging the reviews to go in the wrong place.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I like how you've reduced the entire internet to just Amazon. It is possible to have reviews on other websites. I know they really try to keep that a secret though.
- ars 2y ago
  If UPS put the package by your neighbor, switching vendors doesn't really do anything. Or if you bought from a third party seller, but your review is attached to an FBA product, the shipping review has nothing to do with the current item.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >If UPS put the package by your neighbor, switching vendors doesn't really do anything. Switching to a seller that ships using fedex or usps would do something. We've had the inverse problem, fedex is the one that always screws up our deliveries and we actively look for sellers that don't use them.

barryrandall 2y ago

The review suppression rule is hilarious. The intent seems to be to prevent people from using asymmetric access to the legal system to bully reviewers into removing reviews they don't like. The remedy? The thing the law was trying to prevent.

XCabbage 2y ago
I don't understand this cryptic hinting. What's wrong with the rule, and what thing that the law was trying to prevent does the rule mandate as a remedy?

mmooss 2y ago

> the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience. Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience". They may mean that businesses can't engage people to write such reviews. Also, how will they handle the scale of enforcement? The large companies seem easy - one enforcement action covers all of Yelp, another all of Amazon, etc. But what about the infinite reviews at smaller vendoers? Overall though, I think this is great and long past due. The lawlessness of the Internet - fraud, spying, etc. - is absurd.

bilekas 2y ago
> Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience" Maybe I'm wrong but doesn't the first ammended apply to public speech ? Is there some nuances there when a private company is involved and responsible for the content on their platform, in this case reviews? Genuinely never sure of these things for the US.
- acdha 2y ago
  It does, but this isn’t personal speech but corporate. I can say that buying an iPhone makes me smarter and irresistibly attractive and it’s covered by the first amendment, but it becomes corporate speech once Apple pays me to say that and is thus subject regulation about honesty and disclosure. This is noticeable in ads for things like athletic products – even if it’s a pro athlete they very publicly sponsor, the claims tend to be things like saying they only run in those shoes or some sports drink is part of their training because they don’t want a legal situation because it sounded too much like “Nike said I could run a 4 minute mile if I bought their shoe!” Review curation is an especially good target for this because the question isn’t the speech but rather whose speech is promoted. Nobody gets in trouble if they accept testimonials and only use positive ones in ads because consumers know those aren’t unbiased but a review page which looks like anyone can post there is making a different promise.

maerF0x0 2y ago

Is there something about the American system such that the FTC is more active/aggressive during Democrat office? Anyone else notice this trend? If it's real what causes it?

mikeyouse 2y ago
Of course. The chair of the FTC is a political position so changes with each administration. Very broadly, US Democrats are more in favor of regulation to stop abuses and US Republicans are more ‘hands off, the market will sort it out’ in their approach.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  With the FTC in particular, neither party wanted the FTC to be aggressive. Biden wanted to appoint someone else but had all his appointments blocked by the far-right. Lina Khan got in because populists (left and right) saw her as a weapon that could be wielded against Big Tech. There's actually a big cloud hanging over the Kamala Harris candidacy over whether or not Lina Khan will remain FTC chair. There's a lot of tech money flooding into her campaign. Though in this case it's also to replace the current SEC chair, because the SEC chair is actually enforcing securities law against crypto fraudsters, who would really like to keep their scam going. Same with Trump. Big Tech banned him for, y'know, instigating a coup d'etat. But three years later, Big Tech is now trying to wine and dine him, because the FTC is scaring the shit out of Big Tech. You have Tim Cook going to Trump and Trump saying how he's going to stop the EU from attacking US companies. Hell, Elon Musk bought Twitter just so he could turn it into an arm of the Trump candidacy. And who knows what Mark Zuckerberg thinks. Likewise, with the SEC stuff, Trump used to be a (rightful) big critic of crypto, until he realized he could make money selling tacky NFTs of himself, and is now also trying to get in on that crypto money.
  - know-how 2y ago
    [dead]
sidewndr46 2y ago

cptnapalm 2y ago

Wouldn't this make the glorious reviews for the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer illegal? I mean this thing has saved and ended marriages, enabled people to live their dreams of starting zydeco bands, started the boomerang pigeon hunting craze, and much more. https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/product-reviews/B0047E0EII/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/produc...

mandibles 2y ago
Ah, the days when the Internet was fun.
efreak 2y ago
Amazon no longer let's you see reviews that aren't on the main product listing without logging in. You can see the top reviews and the most recent reviews, and that's it; navigating to the page you linked or clicking one of the star ratings (see all 5 star reviews or all 1 star reviews) prompts a login.

burningChrome 2y ago

>> > the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience. I guess they don't know about how people scam Amazon reviews by getting legit people to simply buy the product and leave a five star review and then get reimbursed for their purchase later by the company or the company the company hired to get these people to do this. (From 2022) Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-market/ https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-...

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Of course they know. One thing at a time.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  Especially now that literally anything the FTC does could be struck down by a federal judge at any time, unless it is explicitly written out or delegated legislation.
WesternWind 2y ago
Actually that's covered by the rule. Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed.
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  I hope this is actively enforced with real teeth very soon. I 1-star fake products and call them out in reviews resulting in the devious vendor somehow being able to send me a postcard to my real physical address offering money for 5 stars. The sham vendor also spam my email weekly. Amazon appears to actively support this process. It needed to be curtailed decades ago.

onemoresoop 2y ago

Good intentions by FTC. Unfortunately nearly impossible to enforce. It's almost like FTC banning junk/spam emails. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this will be enforced and some big players will end up paying large fines. I think Amazon has to get their poop together and fix the comingling product reviews and other ways through their sieve that make this behavior rampant.

diggan 2y ago
How is it impossible to enforce? Bunch of people report Amazon as being rife with fake reviews. FTC puts together some sort of working group that does some research to figure out if it's true. If it's true, they reach out to Amazon telling them to fix it after handing them a fine. After a while, they verify that Amazon implemented sufficient safe-guards against fake reviews. Sure, it wouldn't get rid of all fake reviews, but surely it'd be better than the current approach of doing absolutely nothing, no?
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  How can you enforce people giving fake reviews for things they bought? Bring the review police? How can you prove they're given free products to review them positively? Don't get me wrong, I wish online reviews weren't utterly broken but it seems like business wants it this way. I certainly hope this will get fixed and not jump to the next loophole.
  - consteval 2y ago
    > business wants it this way Of course they want it. It's purely objective for them and purely deceptive to the consumer. Therefore, it's the perfect thing for the FTC to regulate - I mean this is what their purpose is. Enforcement will be difficult, but I really think platforms like Amazon isn't the problem. They're a unified platform, it's pretty easy for them to enforce better review. Maybe you need to have actually bought the product, maybe they monitor product descriptions for asking for reviews, maybe they audit packages for those little "review us 5 stars!" slips, maybe they prevent modifying products, etc. The true tough thing to enforce is little shops. You know, convenience stores, smoke shops, that type. I've been told, verbally, many times that if I review 5 stars, I get some discount. I doubt the FTC will send physical agents to check that.

xmly 2y ago

Good, but HOW?

binarymax 2y ago

Don’t worry, a judge in Texas in the pocket of some big company will shoot this down, just like the attempt to abolish non-competes

renegade-otter 2y ago
[flagged]
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  > the SCOTUS judges are the de facto experts of all matters and the regulators And thankfully so.
  - kccoder 2y ago
    Curious why you think these nine individuals are better suited than people with actual expertise? In the ruling in which they self-ordained these new powers, Gorsuch confused nitrous oxide with nitrogen oxide, five times. Better hope Gorsuch didn't rule on dental anesthetics on your next visit to the dentist. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-courts-contempt-for-facts-is-a-betrayal-of-justice/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-court...
    - consumer451 2y ago
      Especially since one of the main arguments I have heard from folks who approve of the ruling is "but these agency people are un-elected officials!" So are Supreme Court Justices, who unlike agency people have no ethics rules.
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      Because allowing the "people with actual expertise" to decide for themselves how much power they have over the lives of others is a blatantly obvious conflict of interest?
      - 2y ago

nubinetwork 2y ago

Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41911915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41911915

datavirtue 2y ago

Great, this solves for all the small players. What about big tech. They will just have to ignore this ruling.

rachofsunshine 2y ago

If you don't have the time to thoroughly investigate material non-public information before deciding where to have lunch, are you even a responsible consumer? /s The normalization of blatant lying in business is really frustrating, both as a businessperson and as a member of the public. We (correctly) consider just making shit up for their own benefit a major strike against a person, but we implicitly tolerate it in the companies that run a good chunk of our lives! Hell, in some cases we even celebrate it: "wow, look how scrappy that person is, what a brilliant marketing ploy!" - no, they're just a liar.

EasyMark 2y ago
There seems to be a LOT of normalization of straight up lies, made-up-on-the-spot facts, and disinformation the past 6-8 years. Caveat emptor seems to be the SOP rather than a reminder to be skeptical. Of course, that's just my n=1 observation.

alsetmusic 2y ago

Historic date 2024-10-21: the last time anyone lied in a review. I’m glad they’re trying. It remains to be seen how this’ll sort out.

DrillShopper 2y ago
People can break laws. By your logic I guess we shouldn't have laws then.
- rs999gti 2y ago
  > People can break laws. By your logic I guess we shouldn't have laws then. Let me reverse this on you, how much and what type of punishment and penalty should be levied if laws are broken? Like this false online reviews ruling, how far should punishment and penalty go?
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    > how much and what type of punishment and penalty should be levied if laws are broken? Depends on the impact of the crime the person was convicted of and how likely they are to do it again. > how far should punishment and penalty go? For companies who knowingly solicit or publish fake/compensated reviews: disgorgement of profits and refunds without conditions to everyone who asks. Repeated violations come with escalating fines that are a percentage of revenue (not profits) plus bans on company officers holding the position of officer of a publicly traded company for a number of years.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago

Hopefully this part fixes the Amazon review problem, because it lets them go after Amazon itself... > It also prohibits them from ... disseminating such testimonials, when the business ... should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false. Many of the Amazon fake review practices are extremely in the "should have known" category.

6510 2y ago

It all seems quite simple to me. Just require an order number and the date of purchase to write a review and require all reviews be publicly available in a machine readable format and that anyone may publish them. If you pay me I can write the same using 1000 pages without adding anything useful.

alok-g 2y ago
>> Just require an order number ... This does not solve the problem. Fake reviewers often purchase the product on paper. Behind the scenes, the seller may not even ship and instead buy fake shipment tracking from the shipping company. This is much more complex than what you are thinking.
- 6510 2y ago
  You are right, my suggestion involves the lowest hanging fruit where one can purchase unlimited positive or negative reviews from unrelated parties. I can google a far away barber who has accumulated 17 reviews over the last 10 years. Google then allows me to shit talk the guy for the world to see. 2 minutes of effort and its free! They get to carry it around like a badge of shame forever. You should give me a discount or ill post a negative review and unleash the roaches on your hotel. It would be rude if you didn't. edit: I think a digital ID would be useful for real reviews.
  - alok-g 2y ago
    Indeed. Both sides, product/service providers and consumers, try to game the system. That makes it very hard to figure what is the truth.

whiplash451 2y ago

If the product is fake too, does a fake review count?

sarajevo 2y ago

Do you think there will be any impact on sites like HN?

kazinator 2y ago

The first thing you have to do is ban USA-based online marketplace companies from hosting foreign vendors. Then you can better regulate what is left.

bluGill 2y ago
Or you can hold the marketplace companies responsible for whoever markets on them. Of course can't hold foreign marketplaces responsible at all - but that is a different loophole we can close (if it becomes a problem Amazon will ensure it is)
- Thinkx220 2y ago
  Why should a foreign marketplace get the same benefit of the doubt as a domestic market? Especially if those foreign markets belong to countries that are hostile to mine?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    the us government cannot directly do anything about foreign markets.
    - Thinkx220 2y ago
      We could easily restrict them from selling in the US
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Not easially. Shipping to the US is not hard, and the post office / customs doesn't know what company is sending things. Customs can check of course, but for small value packages they typically do not, so long as the import forms look somewhat reasonable and the import taxes are paid they generally are not looking that close. It is even harder if someone knows they are an illegal company as then they put a false return address on the package and there is no easy way to track them down. Regular people are not someone custom wants to make an example of for ordering from a banned foreign company. Large companies will carefully check their supply chain to ensure they are not buying goods from banned companies, but tiny companies and regular people won't care as much. I expect that the EU will have (if they don't already have) rules similar to the US and countries there will generally enforce them. However other countries (China!) will not care as much.

tabbott 2y ago

I hope the FTC staffs a large office for enforcement on this. There are surely many hundreds of companies in the business of selling fake reviews, many of them outside the US, and I don't expect much change in the consumer reality of "most reviews are fake" without a great deal of investigatory effort tracing money flows to shut these operations down.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Amazonz doooomed

capital_guy 2y ago

Amazing all the newfound lawyers in the HN section here pointing out "loopholes" in the rule and then getting corrected by the next commenter. The FTC continues to do the good, thankless work of making good public policy. I appreciate it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
But did the FTC think about this loophole that I just thought of in three seconds? I am so smart!
barryrandall 2y ago
It's almost like they expect the law to be dysfunctional or unevenly applied.
tqi 2y ago
Do you expect that a year from now (or two, or however long you think is a fair amount of time to pass), online reviews will be noticeably better/more useful than they are today? I think the underlying thread here is that most people don't expect this to be any more effective than anti-spam or anti-robocalling calling rules.
- behringer 2y ago
  Probably, yes. And by the by, I get significantly less spam and phone calls than I used to. Vastly fewer and they're all clearly scams now, which makes it easy to ignore.
- someothherguyy 2y ago
  I'd be surprised if the next administration doesn't remove the rule.
m463 2y ago
> The FTC It seems to me the FTC under Lina Khan. Before that I just don't remember it having so much pro-consumer impact.

EasyMark 2y ago

I've had decent results with fakespot and not buying anything lower than a B rating, with a very few exceptions (not enough reviews for example). I think with a little digilence my Amazon experience has gotten better the past few years since I don't just buy the first cheapest thing that pops up because I'm in a hurry.

imiric 2y ago
What makes you trust that Fakespot and sites like it are themselves not compromised? I've had similar success by manually avoiding items that look suspicious in any way, and only buying from Amazon directly, or known reputable sellers. This takes _a lot_ of work, and makes shopping on Amazon exhausting, but I don't see how Fakespot would make this any easier. My problem is not so much detecting fake reviews, but filtering out the possible quality items from the sea of junk copycats. It often happens that entire categories of items consist of junk, and you have no other choice but to pick the least worse one. Sometimes you get unlucky, but thankfully Amazon still has good return policies to cover these cases, so it's not a total loss. The amount of returns they process must be insane. Come to think of it, I'd really like an AI-powered service that acts as an interface to Amazon search, and does this filtering for me. Bonus points for improving search criteria and allowing filtering by country of origin, ranking reputable brands and sellers higher, etc. Since Amazon will never build this, someone please do!
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I trust them because they are owned by Mozilla, and I’ve had good results vs my own random judgement of reviews. I’m probably 95% good and I get most of my stuff from Amazon these days. I do trust my gut feeling as much though and have ignored their grade on what seemed an okay purchase.

nottorp 2y ago

So... wasn't this fraud even before and thus covered in some penal code section?

bombcar 2y ago
There’s a line between fraud and first they’re trying to navigate. Suppressing speech in the USA is notoriously hard, but can be done if targeted narrowly enough.
- alok-g 2y ago
  Thanks. Now I understand the significance of the ruling better. Love this. I am in general interested in seeing free speech being replaced by truthful or well-intentioned speech. Fact-checking is hard, and GenAI is making this worse. In my opinion, it is time to reevaluate the notion of free speech.

notinmykernel 2y ago

Amazon must be quaking in their boots.

skeeterbug 2y ago

This spring our one year old de-humidifier died. The manufacturer would send you a new replacement unit, but first you had to leave a review of the new unit. After the review was submitted, they would send you an Amazon gift card with the replacement value. So the old units that died never get a 1 star, and the new units being "sold" are getting 5 stars. I guess it is still better than most companies that will find whatever reason they can not to replace faulty equipment.

crazygringo 2y ago
You can edit reviews on Amazon. So absolutely go through that process, and once you've spent the gift card, edit your review to 1 star and explain why. Because that's disgusting corporate behavior.

kebsup 2y ago

While making an app, I'm learning what other people in the industry are doing. One piece of "advice" is to put AppStore/play store rating dialog in the onboarding. The case studies show that it indeed improves the reviews by a lot, because people simply rate 5 stars just to get through onboarding.

mk_chan 2y ago

Officially banning fake reviews to introduce liability is a good start, but the real challenge with reviews is the incentive structure. For positive reviews, a business will figure out customers who they already know had a positive experience (quick delivery, continuous usage, etc) and only send them invites to review. This is perfectly legal and the fundamental business model of many review websites - selling the ability to push invites and “manage” reviews. For negative reviews - no business wants these, and customers with bad experiences are likely to post them by themselves. What gets left out is the average experience because reviews are essentially cherry picked from the head and tail ends of the normal curve of experiences. This doesn’t render reviews useless, of course. Having a large number of positive reviews is still a positive signal but it is nowhere close to free from manipulation.

david422 2y ago
When iOS + apps came out, Apple had a system whereby when an app got uninstalled it prompted the user for a star rating and review. Guess who was doing all the uninstalling? People that hated the apps, and app ratings reflected that.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

I think we ought to be focusing not on whether it was "real", but on whether it was written by somebody that the user trusts (or maybe there are n trust-hops between reviewer and user). That way users have recourse when they're misled: they can revoke trust in whichever connection exposed them to the misleading review. Eventually the scammers will be isolated such that they're just paying each other to lie to each other, meanwhile the rest of us can be authentic with each other: we need to learn trust hygiene and bake it into our apps.

DylanDmitri 2y ago
I would love a restaurant review site that could tell you “your brother’s friend from college has been here once and liked it”.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I'd definitely use that, though I'd prefer a social graph protocol which restaurant pages just sort of tap into, rather than having a dedicated site. That way we can use the same trust graph for many applications rather than having the restaurant review graph be separate from the scientific peer review graph which is separate from the trusted mechanic review graph etc...

redmajor12 2y ago

Is this law going to penalize Amazon for not doing the very trivial amount of policing to block AI generated reviews on their site? AI review content is still obvious and Amazon must still benefit from it just as much as all their other dark patterns.

paul7986 2y ago

Also, what about deepfake images, videos and the tons of AI generated trash flooding YouTube? Its interesting to see the government stepping to make the industry around fake reviews to be illegal .. possibly the next step in five to ten years is the government saving the INternet from the onslaught of all the AI generated fake crap that's only going to get worse and worse.

nojvek 2y ago

Love FTC’s momentum in building fair trustable free markets.

kwar13 2y ago

I hope there's enforcement here. I mean just look at this garbage: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeogaeaoehlefnkodbefgpgknn?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeog... I once tried reporting these blatant phishing reviews, but apparently on Google the only way to report a review is if it's "Child sexual abuse material" if it's "policy related" and only "court order" or "intellectual property" if it's legal related. It's a wholy unsatisfactory system riddled with garbage.

ankleturtle 2y ago
Reporting to Google is generally useless. Skim these search results. https://www.google.com/maps/search/deck+builder+chicago/ https://www.google.com/maps/search/deck+builder+chicago/ The a large percentage of these listings are fake. They're run by a single company who has blanketed Chicago with "lead generation" listings across several local service business industries. You can report them to Google. Nothing gets done most of the time. Redressal form? Same thing. Escalate on the forums? Same result. And this is only one such lead gen network that I know of. Google doesn't care.

pmarreck 2y ago

Has anyone else gotten a tremendous number of people approaching them online on various platforms seeking people to work as fake review submitters? I always respond with open disgust and admonition, just wondering if it's just me

refurb 2y ago

Ok, it now banned. I guess my next question is - so what? Without an enforcement mechanism to monitor the millions of review websites nothing will happen. And can you imagine the effort required to prove a review is fake?

wuming2 2y ago

So The Shed at Dulwich could not exist on TripAdvisor US and Botto Bistro could not be punished by Yelp?

alfiedotwtf 2y ago

How do they enforce price this?

alok-g 2y ago

Two questions: Does this apply retroactively? If someone is found to have written fake reviews or paid to get them written in the past, would the rule apply to them too? (I hope so.) Can the rule be imposed if the culprits are all outside the US? (Even if the E-commerce player is in the US, they may not (or may) have done anything wrong intentionally.)

whoitwas 2y ago

This sort of regulation seems oddly granular and not super useful, but not terrible. Companies don't have to offer customer review features. I wonder what would happen if companies decided to remove reviews, rebrand, or switch to another paradigm?

acdha 2y ago
I think the possible changes you mentioned are a desired outcome. The FTC’s consumer protection role tends to be about keeping free markets functional, and under Biden that’s had a lot of focus on removing market distortions. Reviews are tricky that way because people want to trust other buyers but scammers have exploited that trust, and a company removing the reviews section of their site because they don’t want them to be accurate seems like a net win similar to forcing companies to remove false claims. The FTC doesn’t require your product to be good, just honestly sold.
- whoitwas 2y ago
  My objection is it's too granular and bad faith operators will only pivot slightly to continue to exploit. It seems ineffective.

whoitwas 2y ago

It's semi-comical that the subtitle contains "AI-Generated". Even gov is on the hype train.

avsteele 2y ago

I'll believe it when its enforced. The spam calls I'm getting are 'banned' to, for all the good it does.

Zobat 2y ago

> Specifically, the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence This seems a bit redundant, doesn't it?

anymouse123456 2y ago

Feels like they sort of buried the lede here with this little thing hanging off the back: > It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations. It seems to me like most litigants believe the other case to be groundless. I'm curious how this will look from an enforcement perspective.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

Sadly, this may mean the end of such literary gems, as "Hell Holds No Surprises For Me Anymore": https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZFIYJTPVUZ94?ASIN=B000EVOSE4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZFIYJTPVUZ94?ASI...

asne11 2y ago
Ok I'll bite... What am I looking at?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  It's a farcical "review" of Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bears. At some point, it was determined that the sweetener (or something) in these, caused ... adverse ... reactions, in some folks. If you look at all the reviews for that product, you will see many more, but this was the prize-winner. Actually, I suspect that the ratings went to a different (sugared) product, or that Amazon moved the products around, so the ratings applied to something different. The sugar-free variety was the problematic one.
burnished 2y ago
Nope, doesn't look like it'll stop you personally from leaving silly reviews.

neycoda 2y ago

Wow this will affect a lot of product owners I've known

devikapriya917 2y ago

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moribunda 2y ago

Shouldn't this be the link - not some 5-sentence summary? https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/... It would make many comments here pointless if commenters started from reading this: The final rule prohibits: Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false. Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed. Insider Reviews and Consumer Testimonials: The final rule prohibits certain reviews and testimonials written by company insiders that fail to clearly and conspicuously disclose the giver’s material connection to the business. It prohibits such reviews and testimonials given by officers or managers. It also prohibits a business from disseminating such a testimonial that the business should have known was by an officer, manager, employee, or agent. Finally, it imposes requirements when officers or managers solicit consumer reviews from their own immediate relatives or from employees or agents – or when they tell employees or agents to solicit reviews from relatives and such solicitations result in reviews by immediate relatives of the employees or agents. Company-Controlled Review Websites: The final rule prohibits a business from misrepresenting that a website or entity it controls provides independent reviews or opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services. Review Suppression: The final rule prohibits a business from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review. The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment. Misuse of Fake Social Media Indicators: The final rule prohibits anyone from selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or hijacked account. This prohibition is limited to situations in which the buyer knew or should have known that the indicators were fake and misrepresent the buyer’s influence or importance for a commercial purpose.

sandramcghee415 2y ago

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nikolay 2y ago

I can't rely on marketplaces doing a decent job at this - that's why I use Fakespot [0] by Mozilla! [0]: https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/