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FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

ftc.gov

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

#51

Post by smashed »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #44
mkhpalm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ebay seller reviews have been fraudulent for 20 years or more (not ALL reviews, of course). And i think you are talking about the times before NewEgg had 3rd party sellers.

A++++++

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

#52

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

whoisjuan wrote: post #6
yellow_lead wrote: post #2

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

Section 230 protects Amazon from this. They could still go after Amazon if they believe Amazon is negligent in fake user review controls. On paper I think Amazon probably does a lot, but probably not enough.

This is not a rhetorical question. What more do you think they should be doing?

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

#53

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

ghaff wrote: post #28
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?

Some but very limited. Zagat was one for restaurants but they sold out to Google. I used to buy their books/do reviews in exchange for free books. Certainly imperfect but I liked their results pretty well probably because their reviewers lined up pretty well with my preferences--i.e. semi-serious survey. And many quantitative things including TV ratings involved consumer surveys/polling.

The red Zagat books were gems.

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

#54

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

bagacrap wrote: post #48
dmalik wrote: post #33

> “Advertisers will pay a price if they engage in these deceptive practices.” > These include, but are not limited to: 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 en…

The business could run afoul of any of these guidelines if they plant the review on Amazon.

Simple: outsource it to another business to post the fake reviews to Amazon.

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

#56

Post by foota »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #44
mkhpalm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ebay seller reviews have been fraudulent for 20 years or more (not ALL reviews, of course). And i think you are talking about the times before NewEgg had 3rd party sellers.

Honestly, I think 3rd party sellers are half the problem. Eliminating them won't fix everything though, since there are sites where the 1st party itself is dishonest (e.g., yelp), but if you trust the site and it is all 1st party then you're in a good state for reviews, since there's little incentive for anyone to fake them.

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

#59

Post by Gibbon1 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #43
zz865 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is you didn't rely on reviews. Before the internet you went to the shop and you could actually touch the product, try on clothes, use sporting goods, see how this laptop feels and how fast it works. Now buying online you have to trust reviews to choose what to buy.

I think this is bit simplistic. Before the internet, if you were going to buy something that was supposed to have objectively measurable properties, there would likely be a magazine/zine/journal that would include reviews by domain experts. Shovel? Laptop? Scalpel? Engine oil? Covered, you just bought the magazine. The problem now is that the magazines are generally not as good at covering all the options, many of th…

Before the internet, brick and mortar stores and distributors had 'buyers' who were intimately familiar with products in their particular sector. They would review products and decide how many to order if any. If you wanted to sell some consumer product you'd have to ship pre-production models to the buyers. They would test them and tear them down to see how well they were built. That imposed reasonable quality standards on manufacturers.

With the rise of Amazon that's all gone.

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

#60

Post by oceanghost »

lazide wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviews were more "expert"-based 20 years or so again in magazines that had some editorial oversight and processes for selecting and reviewing products. Of course, there were far fewer reviews available, companies still gamed reviewers/magazines but in different ways, and there was sometimes outright fraud around benchmarks, etc.

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.

Can confirm.

In an industry I was in, the trade publication gave the "product of the year" award to whoever bought the most advertisements in the magazine.

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