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For many of us, buying something or finding a local service involves sifting through pages of reviews trying to find the ones that aren’t fake or incentivized. Services like Yelp are rigged to favor paid subscribers who can suppress negative reviews and inflate their rankings. Even review sites with good reputations, like Angi and the Better Business Bureau, let businesses “resolve” a bad review by responding to the complaint, however weakly. (It’s so hard to find a reputable local contractor due to this that I usually just ask my neighbors for recommendations.) Review ranking services like Fakespot and Reviewmeta make it somewhat easier to judge product ratings on sites like Amazon and Walmart, but fake reviews are endemic to the Internet and won’t go away anytime soon. The good news is that they’re now illegal in the US. The FTC has banned fake reviews! I didn’t even hear that this was happening and am so pleased about it.

Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), announced on Monday that a new ban on fake online reviews and testimonials has now gone into effect. The rules are aimed at protecting consumers from unscrupulous reviews, which could misleadingly influence their decision to purchase a product.

In an August press release announcing the finalization of the rules, Khan said, “Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors. By strengthening the FTC’s toolkit to fight deceptive advertising, the final rule will protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive.”

These are some of the most prominent scenarios that are now forbidden under the new rule:

Businesses can’t buy reviews: Businesses are now forbidden from buying reviews, either via monetary compensation or other incentives. This includes both positive and negative reviews.

Businesses can’t misuse social media indicators: Businesses can no longer try to game social media to promote their products by buying followers or inflating views by using bots or hijacked accounts.

Business-owned websites can’t misrepresent their reviews: Businesses now also can’t misrepresent that the reviews for their products on one of their websites are independent when the website is, in fact, owned by the business.

Negative review suppression is a no-no: Businesses can no longer use groundless legal threats to get a person to remove or not post a negative review of the business’s product.
No AI testimonials: A business cannot use an AI-generated persona to give a testimonial for its products.

Of course, just because the new rules are in place doesn’t mean unscrupulous businesses won’t still try to use some of these tactics, but at the very least, they give businesses firm guidelines about what is and isn’t permissible in today’s online economy.

[From Fast Company]

I’m really encouraged by the strides that government agencies are making toward keeping businesses in check. You know the FTC does not have the resources to enforce this, but this is a big step in the right direction. They even have a tip line where fake reviews can be reported. As Fast Company reports, FTC Chair Lina Khan encourages people to report fraud, including fake reviews, at Reportfraud.FTC.Gov. Now I’m off to report the foundation company that claimed that I needed to jack up the side of my house at a cost of $30,000 and pressured me into signing a contract on the spot. The salesman even bragged about making a potential customer have a seizure at the shock of the $60k repair he quoted her. I’m not exaggerating, it was textbook evil sales tactics and these companies prey on elderly people. This company has an A on the BBB website because they respond to the hundreds of complaints against them with the same boilerplate cut and paste apology. I hope the FTC cracks down on sh-t like that too.

As of today, @FTC's final rule banning fake online reviews and testimonials has come into effect.

If you encounter any of these prohibited practices, you can report them to @FTC at: https://t.co/k0O6juZImU https://t.co/I2Rf0b9xTH pic.twitter.com/60qp2cRJMU

— Lina Khan (@linakhanFTC) October 21, 2024

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