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.”
Common Lina Khan W
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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.
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.
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.
That’s not true, ignorance of the law is also a valid defense for police officers violating people’s rights 🙄
Better than nothing but it also seems like it might be kind of difficult to prove the company allowed it knowingly.
Well if you take a company like Amazon they know everything about you already, including if you actually purchased the item you are reviewing. And that should be a simple first “hurdle” for a reviewer to be legit. They already have a way of sorting them out and labeling them in place. So I would assume this means if you don’t have that label your review doesn’t go live. They can then add more qualifiers to prove they know the reviewers are real, since this seems to put the onus of proof on the company not that FTC.
Edit - some words
It is possible I bought the item at my local warmart though and then review it on amazon. I don’t know if anyone does that, but it is possible.
I feel like although possible now, that this may need to change going forward since I’m not sure how Amazon can validate your review if not done through their platform.
This of course fragments reviews to specific retail storefronts, but if the platform can’t validate at least the fact you purchased the item I don’t see anyway they can even begin to know you’re leaving a legit review.
I’m sure this will work.
It’s a start, we could still have nothing. FTC is doing the Lord’s work right now.
You’re right, we should just leave it as being legal 🙄 that’s so much better
Why do people do what you just did?
He says this won’t work.
And somehow you jump to “then we should just leave it as being legal”
He didn’t say we shouldn’t try something just that this might not be the best implementation.
He didn’t say we shouldn’t try something just that this might not be the best implementation.
He didn’t really say anything, you’re just hypothesizing a substantive argument from a low effort pessimistic gripe.
