3 mo. ago • 99%

FTC bans fake reviews

www.cnbc.com FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October

Amazon sued more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators in July 2022 for allegedly brokering fake reviews.

Takes effect in October, finally some good news

74 comments

Lina Khan is a champion of the people. She's one of a zillion reasons voting matters.

124
- She's an absolute rock star
  
  49
- Walz/Khan 2032
  
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I’m very interested how this will affect Amazon, and how they will be able to enforce it

102
- Maybe they shouldn't have 6,000 versions of the same thing under different fake brands sold by fake companies.
  
  Clean that up and the rest becomes a hell of a lot easier.
  
  73
  
  Not to mention the sellers that swap the product but keep the reviews
  
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  I think a lot of that stuff is people buying items in bulk off alibaba, rebranding it, and listing. Most of it is crap, but that's how stuff like it can be so cheaply produced, it's one or two factories producing at scale.
  
  8
  
  All the DCRYTJT HDMI cables for a start. Got a couple of bad reviews? Just run your hand over the keyboard at random, there's your new brand name. They're now XDCRHJT HDMI cables.
  
  Generic products should just be listed together.
  
  4
- AMZ: Who, us? All our reviews are REAL!
  
  Target and Walmart: Yeah, what they said!
  
  25
  
  Lowe's is horrible about this too. Most of the big box stores are but Lowe's seems to be the most egregious about it
  
  8
- I updated my Firefox browser. Now, when viewing a product on Amazon, Firefox rates the reviews A-F based on whether or not they are reliable.
  
  17
  
  Is that part of the browser itself or some extension?
  
  4
  
  That’s been a thing for at least a year.
  
  2
- Fuck Amazon. Never buy their basics bullshit, they steal shit and rebrand it. It's as unethical as purchasing shit gets.
  
  Edit: Here's a video! https://youtu.be/HbxWGjQ2szQ
  
  11
  
  Literally every retailer steals shit and rebrands it; what did you think generic store brands were?
  
  1
- The FTC is responsible for enforcing it, not Amazon.
  
  0
The ban also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.

I wonder if "followers" includes users and how that will impact Twitter, Reddit, Facebooky, Instagram, TikTok, etc who use stats like active users to drive ad sales.

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- But I thought Elon got rid of all the bots... does that mean my sweetheart's link isn't actually in their bio?
  
  I am devastated.
  
  21
- I'm curious about that too, I assumed the main target was online storefronts but it seems more expansive than that. Was surprised to learn about Amazon suing admins of FB groups.
  
  16
- Let's hope this means the constant calls I get on What's App to work as a fake promoter bumping review scores will stop.
  
  I was starting to be tempted because I hate poverty.
  
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There’s no way they will be able to enforce this.

30
- Here's one way to enforce it: the FTC could set up fronts that sell fake reviews. If anyone tries to buy fake reviews, the FTC busts them.
  
  After doing this enough, companies will be suspicious of anyone selling fake reviews. Maybe suspicious enough to not risk buying them. Kind of like how it's common knowledge that every supposed killer-for-hire is actually an FBI agent waiting to arrest you.
  
  Eventually, nobody want to buy fake reviews. And when nobody wants to pay for them, they will disappear.
  
  18
  
  That….. could work.
  
  5
  
  That only works for 3rd party vendors.
  
  Amazon doesn't even bother and just does shady content filtering to make their products always appear first and show real reviews that they think will make you buy the product.
  
  There's a partial chance they can shadow ban reviews or screw with the total rating too, but I think they entice enough people to produce a passable rating, even if the product is subpar.
  
  Still anything is a start, FTC been making rounds lately.
  
  2
  
  Well the ones that call themselves that are probably fbi agents.
  
  The real ones likely don’t take walkins.
  
  1
- Perhaps the value is in having something explicitly written in a book, so that we can actually throw it at them.
  
  They won't catch all cases, but maybe the fear of slipping and becoming the unlucky company that gets caught and punished will have a positive effect on the industry.
  
  I don't have a backgrounder in law, this is simply optimistic speculation in response to pessimistic speculation.
  
  3
- To post a review, submit your SSN / verify with a third party.
  
  Cue a whole new identity sales & theft industry!
  
  (I’ve wanted to see some verified reviewer concept for a long time now but it seems dangerous and only half useful.)
  
  2
  
  Amazon marks your review with a special flag if you purchased the product. Still plenty of fake reviews.
  
  2
Amazon has some major cleaning up to do

25
- The new rule bans writing, buying or selling fake reviews.
  
  It does not require Amazon or Apple to identify or delete fake reviews.
  
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The enforcement of this is going to be pretty tough. And the fake reviews by bots will get argued to high hell and back in court. "They aren't bots, they are real people in click farms".

Love the direction but I am not holding my breath until we see some actionable change from this.

25
- That's not how this works. The rule can't stop you as a private person. You can still post bot reviews.
  
  It will apply to businesses, which don't have the right to remain silent or against searches. If they suspect a business is breaking the rules, they can subpoena the employees, computers and bank records to check if they are breaking the rule. And if they think the employees would risk jail time for perjury or destruction of evidence to protect their employer, they can just raid the offices and seize the computers.
  
  7
I won't believe this is serious until somebody kicks down a door

23
I purchased an FTC and was very pleased with my product. It can be loud at times and make bold claims, but in the end does nothing.

20
Now there's an interesting one. If this is actually enforced properly then it could really have a big impact on some sites that are notorious for bot spamming to make themselves look impressive.

19
- Very true but man this is gonna be tough to actually enforce. Not only just bots but how the heck are paid reviews gonna be found and banned? Those are legit reviews by actual people, just saying bull crap because they were paid or received a free product or something
  
  7
  
  Its a step in the right direction. They've gone from having hundreds or thousands of AI reviews to having one or two real reviews for the same price. In theory, anyways.
  
  2
How can this possibly be enforced?

19
- Not sure why you're being down voted. It's a legit question even if you support the law. Enforcement seems very difficult and other laws and courts make even easier enforcement difficult.
  
  I still think it's a very positive direction from the FTC.
  
  15
  
  Not sure why you're being down voted
  
  I guess Reddit habits never die, eh?
  
  But, I’d love to see this come to fruition. I just don’t see how enforcement could keep up with the sheer numbers of fake reviews.
  
  9
- The rule targets people who write or sell fake reviews. So the FTC could pretend to be a manufacturer soliciting fake reviews, and then go after anyone who offers to sell them.
  
  6
  
  And if the people selling them live in another country?
  
  1
- Might just give way to an arms race for realistic fake reviews, but at least this gives teeth to investigators. If they can prove that a company did it, then they have a rule to cite that it’s an offense, instead of the fuck-all we have now.
  
  5
- The same way as other laws. A small fine that gets rolled into the cost of doing business.
  
  4
  
  I like those EU percentage of profit ones. Wouldn't mind a bit more of that.
  
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- Everett True.
  
  1
- How can any law be enforced?
  
  0
  
  How can laws be real if paper isn't real
  
  7
  
  Because this isn’t a law like- breaking and entry is a law. It’s won’t be so easy to prove, and it’s a lot easier to tie this up in appeals.
  
  4
  
  Um, there are thousands of laws that can be enforced through direct observation of a crime. How do you propose that bots or fake reviews be banned in reality? That's like saying that I want to ban farts at my house. Ok, great. Saying you want something banned and actually having the means to do so are two completely different things.
  
  1
This will be fun to Amazon, either 95% of all reviews will suddenly disappear or they're no longer legal.

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Hopefully they address those companies that force frontload all the 5-star, then 4-star, etc. with no way to sort except by going through hundreds of pages.

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So, they’re gonna start policing Apple’s App Store for the many obviously fake reviews and make Apple do something about it, right? Please be yes.

14
- So long as they do the same for androids store and everyone else- I agree.
  
  6
- Apple is not required to do anything.
  
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Next ban fake followers lmao

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- They mention followers in the article!
  
  7
- Read the article
  
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Oh yeah that’ll work 👍

2
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