FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#71

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #41

lazide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.

Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?

Was? The 10 bucks/month I pay for consumer reports is the best money I spend on a subscription!

They’re still quite strong.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#72

Post by diogenescynic » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:28 AM UTC

Fake reviews are so frustratingly common now. Hotels and restaurants are obviously buying fake reviews. Go look on basically any review site and so many reviews are from accounts with only 1-5 reviews leaving VERY generic and brief reviews. You can no longer trust Yelp, Google Reviews, or any of the other travel reviews. It sucks! There needs to be a website that forces some form of review verification. We need a new Yelp. Also, if you leave a negative review businesses will do everything they can to have it taken down. I stayed at a terrible hotel a few years back and even though my review was highly reviewed, they eventually took it down for some random reason. I no longer have any faith in online reviews on any website. Word of mouth is the only thing you can rely on.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#73

Post by nprateem » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

zipiridu wrote: post #30

ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know reviews were more reliable before ? In pretty much all industries people were hacking reviews before especially when channels were more limited. Nobody invented fraud yesterday.

The "fraud economy" was democratized in the last decade but it has always existed. Previously you needed to be rich, powerful, and well connected to have media companies cover your business/product. Now you can buy fake engagement, reviews, upvotes, etc with a few click so everyone does it. If you don't do it you will be outcompeted by the ones who do. I've experienced this myself. I tried buying ads and writing orga…

A friend was wondering where you learnt about this stuff?

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#74

Post by walterbell » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

agrajag wrote: post #68

walterbell wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could they select this 17-page subset of companies without some investigation? > List of October 2021 Recipients of the FTC’s Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Deceptive or Unfair Conduct around Endorsements and Testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/penalty-offense...

This is basically every large company, and most all of them have enough brand recognition to not need fake reviews.

Might be interesting to see which large company is not on this list.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#75

Post by ocdtrekkie » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

sour-taste wrote: post #5

yellow_lead wrote: post #2

I wonder if they have any intention of going after Amazon - probably not.

Amazon is listed as one of the companies receiving the notice, though as the list says that's not evidence that they've done anything wrong. Google, Pepsi, and others who are unlikely to be involved in this are there too https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/penalty-offense...

> Google, Pepsi, and others who are unlikely to be involved in this are there too

Bear in mind, this is not just about "fake reviews" like people submit on Amazon. This is about "falsely claiming an endorsement by a third party; misrepresenting whether an endorser is an actual, current, or recent user; using an endorsement to make deceptive performance claims; failing to disclose an unexpected material connection with an endorser; and misrepresenting that the experience of endorsers represents consumers’ typical or ordinary experience"

I guarantee you both Google and Pepsi have committed offenses on that list, and so has nearly everyone else in modern marketing these days.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#76

Post by vineyardmike » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #7

Random thought: before the Internet were reviews any better? I know there were/are quality reviews like Consumer Reports and such. But were there any crowdsourced reviews? Are we worse off or are we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?

> we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?

I think this places more blame on the consumer than is due. Sure people need to understand how to interpret data, but a lot of this is plain fraud. Fake reviews are fraud. They make a product seem better than it is. Its sorta like false advertising, in a way.

A lot of modern times uses automated systems, eg. maybe amazon top page might require 4+ stars, etc. This would normally be a positive feedback loop (good products get in front of more people, more reviews if good means stronger basis for being in front). With fake reviews, you're disrupting the systems we have for everyone, hurting other brands (if not directly through slander campaigns) and also acting fraudulently.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#77

Post by eloisius » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #29

This is just going to further empower the knockoff Chinese brands that make the most use of fake reviews and are mostly beyond the reach of the FTC.

Hopefully the hammer will come down on The Amazons, not indicidual sellers on the platform. If Aliexpress wants to be a junk review haven, who cares?

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#78

Post by vineyardmike » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

i_like_apis wrote: post #9

yellow_lead wrote: post #2

I wonder if they have any intention of going after Amazon - probably not.

It isn't really Amazon that does it though, it's the sellers on Amazon. Although it would be interesting if there were ever fake reviews on the Amazon branded products. (AFIK there aren't)

It benefits amazon to not do anything here, so they could be on notice for being complicit.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#79

Post by techrat » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:48 AM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #41

lazide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.

Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?

Consumer Reports buys the products they review. They can't be blacklisted if they're not relying on the manufacturer to send them a free demo/item.

(Youtube/Blog) Reviewers get blacklisted by companies by not providing a positive review about a product they were given. As they rely on scooping type style reviews, this means they not only don't get a free product to review, but they can't review it until after it's for sale instead of being able to 'preview' it for people and get more clicks that way.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#80

Post by makeitdouble » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:52 AM UTC

mkhpalm wrote: post #32

ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know reviews were more reliable before ? In pretty much all industries people were hacking reviews before especially when channels were more limited. Nobody invented fraud yesterday.

One example I can remember from 10+ years ago was newegg. I don't recall ever really feeling like I got "duped" based on the many online reviews there. I think that sentiment was pretty well revered and not just my personal opinions of it. Everything was pretty well spot on from my experiences. That said, I have no idea how that would fair these days. I'll even go so far as to say back when Amazon was getting started…

It should be pointed out that current fake review issues are not just on fraudulent products.

For instance Aukey has been caught by Amazon, but in my experience their products were pretty good, and they probably played the fake review game mainly due to everyone else playing it, and it became an arms race.