What companies and platforms can do to help stop fake paid reviews

Most people now rely on online reviews of products and services to help decide what or where to buy, and many companies rely on reviews to attract customers. People should be able to trust that these reviews reflect the honest opinions of actual customers.But several FTC cases, including Pending complaints against Roomster, suggesting that some companies abuse this trust by posting false or deceptive reviews. Such reviews are used to promote a company’s own products or slam an honest competitor’s products.

It’s too easy for companies to do this on their own, or by hiring shady businesses to post fake reviews in exchange for payment. How shameless is the commercial traffic of fake reviews? Companies looking to purchase fake five-star recommendations don’t have to look far, as many paid review generators are openly advertised on social media sites and appear in search results. Platforms that connect buyers and sellers and provide reviews are well aware of this problem, as are platforms that review buying and selling. Some of these companies are better than others at filtering out questionable reviews and rooting out, flagging, suspending or delisting companies that use them. But a quick search today on any major search engine or many social media sites will show how easy it is to buy reviews, and how many platforms could be doing more to protect consumers and honest businesses from this deceptive practice.

The FTC will continue to use the FTC Act’s prohibitions on deceptive conduct to prosecute companies and postpaid businesses that deceive consumers through false reviews on their websites and platforms. But platforms are best positioned to fix the review ecosystem—and they have the tools to do it. Among other things, they can hire more people, improve detection techniques, appropriately share information about bad actors and fraud patterns, be more transparent with the public, and provide more access to outside researchers. They may also consider modifying design and infrastructure elements that may be causing problems or at least making them more difficult to solve. What many of these platforms seem to be lacking right now is the will and motivation to take these measures. (Another confusing factor: A federal law called the Communications Decency Act makes it difficult for law enforcement agencies like the Federal Trade Commission to hold online services accountable for the proliferation of fake reviews written by others on their sites.)

To complement any proactive steps taken by platforms in this area, platforms should also provide individuals and honest businesses with accessible, effective and meaningful ways to report suspicious reviews. Unfortunately, these reporting mechanisms are sometimes difficult to find or ineffective, and some platforms are unresponsive to such reports.Still, it’s a good idea for people to report specific issues—whether you suspect fake positive reviews or fake negative reviews – because At least unresponsive platforms can’t say afterwards that they didn’t know about it.

To help people understand how and where to report suspicious comments on a given site, we’ve put together some Current news from several major platforms. If you try to report such issues to the platform but don’t get a real answer, please let us know by: reportfraud.ftc.gov.

The FTC also has two messages for businesses. First, don’t post fake reviews yourself or through a paid provider. This deceptive conduct violates the Federal Trade Commission Act. Secondly, if your company has been falsely targeted by a competitor posing as a customer, or approached by a postpaid agency, we want to hear about your experience: reportfraud.ftc.gov.

Improving the health of the online review ecosystem has long been important to the FTC.In addition to our ongoing enforcement actions, last year we issued Notice of Penalties and Violations Inform hundreds of advertisers and let them know that deceptive reviews and endorsements can result in financial penalties.We are also working hard updating our Accreditation Guide Addressing fake reviews.exist www.ftc.gov/reviews, we have specific guidance on reviews for platforms, marketers, and influencers.we still have Advice to consumers Comments on how to use and beware of fakes.