Fake and fraudulent online reviews now explicitly banned

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Originally published at: Fake and fraudulent online reviews now explicitly banned - Boing Boing

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Enforcement of laws is always an issue, but making this illegal is the necessary first step. That’s assuming some company doesn’t sue and get the rule tossed out because Congress didn’t explicitly ban the practice, now that the Chevron doctrine is dead.

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You know that’s coming… :rage: I hate this timeline.

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A couple weeks ago I was working in the front yard when the recycling truck came down the street.

A guy gets out and asks if I want a t-shirt, sure, why not.

There’s a qr code on the shirt, can you leave a 5 star review? I don’t have my phone on me, no shirt for me.

I suspect their contract is up or they’re trying to get a contract in another community.

Is this law the democrats taking away rights again? Why are they against business?

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This seems the get out clause for bizness. Customer leaves a bad review? They’re just misrepresenting their experience!

I also worry that it will kill the time-honored tradition of leaving satirical reviews for weird/stupid/innoucuous products. I can see companies trying to get these removed (though they may reverse-Streisand themselves in the process).

That’s also to say nothing of political speech in product reviews (which may well be protected, IANAL).

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It’s a start, but as far as I can tell this new law may not prevent one of the insidious forms of review bribes that I’ve seen for some Amazon products.

I bought a pair of well-reviewed headphones from Amazon and when I received them they came with a note from the seller that I would receive a gift card if I posted a 5-star review, without mentioning the bribe, of course. The headphones were uncomfortable and the scam made me mad but when I tried to post a poor review and mentioned the bribe scam to warn others, Amazon’s algorithm wouldn’t let me post it. There was also no mechanism to report the scam to Amazon itself. Amazon doesn’t care if their sellers are faking the reviews as long as it drives sales. We need to create seious financial and legal incentives to end this crap.

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That’s messed up. Just out of curiosity: Did you try posting a 5 star review with the same text? When that goes through, it might still serve as a warning, especially when people start tagging that review as helpful.

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I long ago stopped reading five star reviews.

One star reviews are more honest and it’s generally not hard to detect the cuckoos and loonies with an axe to grind: “If I had known the author was not a Christian and did not write from a biblical perspective I would not have bought this book”, on a totally non-religious book on child care.

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