from Hacker News

FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

by indus on 10/22/24, 3:21 PM with 342 comments

  • by bragr on 10/22/24, 3:27 PM

    Does the regulation say anything about deceptively moderating reviews? e.g. deleting all the low star reviews?

    edit: it doesn't seem so. You just have use some weasel language:

    >The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment.

    https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

  • by capital_guy on 10/22/24, 6:57 PM

    Amazing all the newfound lawyers in the HN section here pointing out "loopholes" in the rule and then getting corrected by the next commenter.

    The FTC continues to do the good, thankless work of making good public policy. I appreciate it.

  • by burningChrome on 10/22/24, 4:04 PM

    >> > the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience.

    I guess they don't know about how people scam Amazon reviews by getting legit people to simply buy the product and leave a five star review and then get reimbursed for their purchase later by the company or the company the company hired to get these people to do this.

    (From 2022) Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews

    https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-...

  • by gniv on 10/22/24, 3:30 PM

    The press release from FTC containing the entire rule: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

  • by AdmiralAsshat on 10/22/24, 3:29 PM

    > It also bans businesses from creating or selling reviews or testimonials. Businesses that knowingly buy fake reviews, procure them from company insiders or disseminate fake reviews will be penalized. It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.”

    Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"

  • by ChrisMarshallNY on 10/23/24, 2:53 PM

    Sadly, this may mean the end of such literary gems, as "Hell Holds No Surprises For Me Anymore":

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RZFIYJTPVUZ94?ASI...

  • by jsheard on 10/22/24, 3:44 PM

    Do testimonials count as reviews? Bad news for all the product launches I see on here which are endorsed by 10 unidentifiable "people" with abbreviated surnames and suspiciously stock-photo-ish headshots, if so.

  • by mk_chan on 10/22/24, 9:07 PM

    Officially banning fake reviews to introduce liability is a good start, but the real challenge with reviews is the incentive structure.

    For positive reviews, a business will figure out customers who they already know had a positive experience (quick delivery, continuous usage, etc) and only send them invites to review. This is perfectly legal and the fundamental business model of many review websites - selling the ability to push invites and “manage” reviews.

    For negative reviews - no business wants these, and customers with bad experiences are likely to post them by themselves.

    What gets left out is the average experience because reviews are essentially cherry picked from the head and tail ends of the normal curve of experiences. This doesn’t render reviews useless, of course. Having a large number of positive reviews is still a positive signal but it is nowhere close to free from manipulation.

  • by mmooss on 10/22/24, 3:59 PM

    > the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience.

    Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience". They may mean that businesses can't engage people to write such reviews.

    Also, how will they handle the scale of enforcement? The large companies seem easy - one enforcement action covers all of Yelp, another all of Amazon, etc. But what about the infinite reviews at smaller vendoers?

    Overall though, I think this is great and long past due. The lawlessness of the Internet - fraud, spying, etc. - is absurd.

  • by BugsJustFindMe on 10/22/24, 5:07 PM

    Hopefully this part fixes the Amazon review problem, because it lets them go after Amazon itself...

    > It also prohibits them from ... disseminating such testimonials, when the business ... should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.

    Many of the Amazon fake review practices are extremely in the "should have known" category.

  • by binarymax on 10/22/24, 4:14 PM

    Don’t worry, a judge in Texas in the pocket of some big company will shoot this down, just like the attempt to abolish non-competes

  • by tabbott on 10/22/24, 6:26 PM

    I hope the FTC staffs a large office for enforcement on this. There are surely many hundreds of companies in the business of selling fake reviews, many of them outside the US, and I don't expect much change in the consumer reality of "most reviews are fake" without a great deal of investigatory effort tracing money flows to shut these operations down.

  • by __MatrixMan__ on 10/22/24, 9:34 PM

    I think we ought to be focusing not on whether it was "real", but on whether it was written by somebody that the user trusts (or maybe there are n trust-hops between reviewer and user). That way users have recourse when they're misled: they can revoke trust in whichever connection exposed them to the misleading review.

    Eventually the scammers will be isolated such that they're just paying each other to lie to each other, meanwhile the rest of us can be authentic with each other: we need to learn trust hygiene and bake it into our apps.

  • by Simulacra on 10/22/24, 3:30 PM

    I went to a salon recently and was told I could get 10% off by leaving a 5 star review BEFORE I received any service. That is something I really hate and I wish review sites monitored for that more. Would this be the same thing as buying reviews?

  • by maerF0x0 on 10/22/24, 3:59 PM

    Is there something about the American system such that the FTC is more active/aggressive during Democrat office? Anyone else notice this trend? If it's real what causes it?

  • by skeeterbug on 10/22/24, 8:18 PM

    This spring our one year old de-humidifier died. The manufacturer would send you a new replacement unit, but first you had to leave a review of the new unit. After the review was submitted, they would send you an Amazon gift card with the replacement value. So the old units that died never get a 1 star, and the new units being "sold" are getting 5 stars.

    I guess it is still better than most companies that will find whatever reason they can not to replace faulty equipment.

  • by anymouse123456 on 10/23/24, 2:29 PM

    Feels like they sort of buried the lede here with this little thing hanging off the back:

    > It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.

    It seems to me like most litigants believe the other case to be groundless. I'm curious how this will look from an enforcement perspective.

  • by paul7986 on 10/22/24, 11:22 PM

    Also, what about deepfake images, videos and the tons of AI generated trash flooding YouTube?

    Its interesting to see the government stepping to make the industry around fake reviews to be illegal .. possibly the next step in five to ten years is the government saving the INternet from the onslaught of all the AI generated fake crap that's only going to get worse and worse.

  • by alok-g on 10/23/24, 8:45 AM

    Two questions:

    Does this apply retroactively? If someone is found to have written fake reviews or paid to get them written in the past, would the rule apply to them too? (I hope so.)

    Can the rule be imposed if the culprits are all outside the US? (Even if the E-commerce player is in the US, they may not (or may) have done anything wrong intentionally.)

  • by kebsup on 10/22/24, 9:04 PM

    While making an app, I'm learning what other people in the industry are doing. One piece of "advice" is to put AppStore/play store rating dialog in the onboarding. The case studies show that it indeed improves the reviews by a lot, because people simply rate 5 stars just to get through onboarding.

  • by nikolay on 10/31/24, 5:45 AM

    I can't rely on marketplaces doing a decent job at this - that's why I use Fakespot [0] by Mozilla!

    [0]: https://www.fakespot.com/

  • by EasyMark on 10/22/24, 7:13 PM

    I've had decent results with fakespot and not buying anything lower than a B rating, with a very few exceptions (not enough reviews for example). I think with a little digilence my Amazon experience has gotten better the past few years since I don't just buy the first cheapest thing that pops up because I'm in a hurry.

  • by nubinetwork on 10/22/24, 4:21 PM

  • by 6510 on 10/22/24, 5:32 PM

    It all seems quite simple to me. Just require an order number and the date of purchase to write a review and require all reviews be publicly available in a machine readable format and that anyone may publish them.

    If you pay me I can write the same using 1000 pages without adding anything useful.

  • by whoitwas on 10/23/24, 11:12 AM

    This sort of regulation seems oddly granular and not super useful, but not terrible. Companies don't have to offer customer review features. I wonder what would happen if companies decided to remove reviews, rebrand, or switch to another paradigm?

  • by redmajor12 on 10/22/24, 11:18 PM

    Is this law going to penalize Amazon for not doing the very trivial amount of policing to block AI generated reviews on their site? AI review content is still obvious and Amazon must still benefit from it just as much as all their other dark patterns.

  • by brandonmenc on 10/22/24, 3:45 PM

    Next can we ban 1-star reviews that just complain about the shipping and not the product itself?

  • by nottorp on 10/22/24, 7:16 PM

    So... wasn't this fraud even before and thus covered in some penal code section?

  • by Zobat on 10/23/24, 1:12 PM

    > Specifically, the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence

    This seems a bit redundant, doesn't it?

  • by nojvek on 10/22/24, 11:48 PM

    Love FTC’s momentum in building fair trustable free markets.

  • by alsetmusic on 10/22/24, 5:06 PM

    Historic date 2024-10-21: the last time anyone lied in a review.

    I’m glad they’re trying. It remains to be seen how this’ll sort out.

  • by kwar13 on 10/23/24, 1:58 AM

    I hope there's enforcement here. I mean just look at this garbage:

    https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/metamask/nkbihfbeog...

    I once tried reporting these blatant phishing reviews, but apparently on Google the only way to report a review is if it's "Child sexual abuse material" if it's "policy related" and only "court order" or "intellectual property" if it's legal related. It's a wholy unsatisfactory system riddled with garbage.

  • by wuming2 on 10/23/24, 4:17 AM

    So The Shed at Dulwich could not exist on TripAdvisor US and Botto Bistro could not be punished by Yelp?

  • by datavirtue on 10/22/24, 4:42 PM

    Great, this solves for all the small players. What about big tech. They will just have to ignore this ruling.

  • by cptnapalm on 10/22/24, 4:00 PM

    Wouldn't this make the glorious reviews for the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer illegal? I mean this thing has saved and ended marriages, enabled people to live their dreams of starting zydeco bands, started the boomerang pigeon hunting craze, and much more.

    https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/produc...

  • by neycoda on 10/23/24, 10:10 PM

    Wow this will affect a lot of product owners I've known

  • by sarajevo on 10/22/24, 5:48 PM

    Do you think there will be any impact on sites like HN?

  • by whiplash451 on 10/22/24, 5:36 PM

    If the product is fake too, does a fake review count?

  • by alfiedotwtf on 10/23/24, 7:15 AM

    How do they enforce price this?

  • by refurb on 10/23/24, 2:02 AM

    Ok, it now banned. I guess my next question is - so what?

    Without an enforcement mechanism to monitor the millions of review websites nothing will happen.

    And can you imagine the effort required to prove a review is fake?

  • by whoitwas on 10/23/24, 11:16 AM

    It's semi-comical that the subtitle contains "AI-Generated". Even gov is on the hype train.

  • by moribunda on 10/26/24, 5:07 AM

    Shouldn't this be the link - not some 5-sentence summary? https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

    It would make many comments here pointless if commenters started from reading this:

    The final rule prohibits:

    Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials:

    The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.

    Buying Positive or Negative Reviews:

    The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed.

    Insider Reviews and Consumer Testimonials:

    The final rule prohibits certain reviews and testimonials written by company insiders that fail to clearly and conspicuously disclose the giver’s material connection to the business. It prohibits such reviews and testimonials given by officers or managers. It also prohibits a business from disseminating such a testimonial that the business should have known was by an officer, manager, employee, or agent. Finally, it imposes requirements when officers or managers solicit consumer reviews from their own immediate relatives or from employees or agents – or when they tell employees or agents to solicit reviews from relatives and such solicitations result in reviews by immediate relatives of the employees or agents.

    Company-Controlled Review Websites:

    The final rule prohibits a business from misrepresenting that a website or entity it controls provides independent reviews or opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services.

    Review Suppression:

    The final rule prohibits a business from using unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review. The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment.

    Misuse of Fake Social Media Indicators:

    The final rule prohibits anyone from selling or buying fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views generated by a bot or hijacked account. This prohibition is limited to situations in which the buyer knew or should have known that the indicators were fake and misrepresent the buyer’s influence or importance for a commercial purpose.

  • by pmarreck on 10/23/24, 2:02 AM

    Has anyone else gotten a tremendous number of people approaching them online on various platforms seeking people to work as fake review submitters? I always respond with open disgust and admonition, just wondering if it's just me

  • by xmly on 10/22/24, 4:14 PM

    Good, but HOW?

  • by notinmykernel on 10/22/24, 7:29 PM

    Amazon must be quaking in their boots.

  • by avsteele on 10/23/24, 12:03 PM

    I'll believe it when its enforced. The spam calls I'm getting are 'banned' to, for all the good it does.

  • by rachofsunshine on 10/22/24, 4:51 PM

    If you don't have the time to thoroughly investigate material non-public information before deciding where to have lunch, are you even a responsible consumer? /s

    The normalization of blatant lying in business is really frustrating, both as a businessperson and as a member of the public. We (correctly) consider just making shit up for their own benefit a major strike against a person, but we implicitly tolerate it in the companies that run a good chunk of our lives! Hell, in some cases we even celebrate it: "wow, look how scrappy that person is, what a brilliant marketing ploy!" - no, they're just a liar.

  • by mensetmanusman on 10/22/24, 6:30 PM

    Amazonz doooomed

  • by onemoresoop on 10/22/24, 4:13 PM

    Good intentions by FTC. Unfortunately nearly impossible to enforce. It's almost like FTC banning junk/spam emails. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how this will be enforced and some big players will end up paying large fines. I think Amazon has to get their poop together and fix the comingling product reviews and other ways through their sieve that make this behavior rampant.

  • by fny on 10/22/24, 3:44 PM

    Unfortunately, this rule excludes most of the fake reviews that plague Amazon.

    There are a lot of outfits in Pakistan that recruit reviewers in the US by offering a full refund for Chinese products in exchange for a five star review.

    This rule should require disclosure of this behavior and frankly any review that does not originate for a bonafide purchase.

  • by kazinator on 10/22/24, 6:14 PM

    The first thing you have to do is ban USA-based online marketplace companies from hosting foreign vendors. Then you can better regulate what is left.

  • by barryrandall on 10/22/24, 3:47 PM

    The review suppression rule is hilarious. The intent seems to be to prevent people from using asymmetric access to the legal system to bully reviewers into removing reviews they don't like. The remedy? The thing the law was trying to prevent.