A federal rule banning fake online reviews is now in effect.
The Federal Trade Commission issued the rulein August banning the sale or purchase of online reviews. The rule, which went into effect Monday, allows the agency to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it.
“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said about the rule in August. She added that the 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.”
allows the agency to seek civil penalties against those who knowingly violate it.
I hate that wording. Ignorance of the law isn’t a defense, unless you’re a corporation, apparently.
It also looks like this doesn’t address the practice of offering incentive for actual purchasers to leave positive reviews.
That’s not what knowingly means in this context. Knowingly refers to the level of intent required to pursue charges, not whether they knew there was a law against it.
In this case it requires the government to show that the person intended to leave a review and/or testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist.
Anyways my brother works for the FTC. With the current funding, they take thousands of complaints before they even look into something. It’s effectively useless as only the most publicised cases get any enforcement and the fines are tiny. And he says it was twice as bad before Biden.
They’ll just outsource it to foreign “reputation management” firms and pretend they had no idea what was happening, like how Coke got away with murdering union members in a foreign country.
That’s not true, ignorance of the law is also a valid defense for police officers violating people’s rights 🙄
Awesome, now make them criminally liable.
Corporations are people, no? Throw them in prison.
IMO, corporate punishments should work like that: steal a little from someone? Lose 90 days of profit. Steal a lot? Lose a couple years of profits. Kill someone? Lose 20 years of profits
Jailing CEOs works better only because money is easy to manipulate. Loosing 20 years of profit just means bankruptcy. Make a new name new company buys all assets of bankrupt at fault company and nothing but the name changes. I’m with the idea that if companies have personhood than the person in charge is responsible for harm that personhood does.
I wonder if having to face consequences for their actions would change how CEOs behave 🤔
No. That’s not what that means. Profit by definition is the excess revenue that isn’t required to run the business.
Lina Khan is literally too good for consumers, that’s why she don’t last :(
Who was that punchable face guy who undid net neutrality? And she is completely opposite.
Ajit Pai is that scumbags name. If I ever bump into him at a grocery store I plan to give him the same level of respect he gave the American people.
Literally the opposite lol. He got rid of net neutrality with the help of spamming with a bunch of fake bots for support. Nobody actually supported it, except the monopolies of course.
This is pretty close to banning that exact action. That should’ve instantly kicked him out of office for that, but it showed pretty clearly that we weren’t in a democracy…
Common Lina Khan W
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. I love the work Lina Khan is doing. Its going to be so sad when Kamala gives her the boot :(
Why would Harris give her the boot? Khan was placed in position by Biden.
Its up for debate if she will, but a lot of big ticket donors are bribing her requesting it as a favor for donating to her campaign.
I thought most of those big donors were just straight up backing trump. I guess the tariffs got them down?
