FTC Chair Lina Khan speaks throughout a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee affirmation listening to in Washington, D.C., April 21, 2021.
Graeme Jennings | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The Federal Trade Commission on Friday proposed a new rule that seeks to ban fake on-line reviews, marking its most aggressive step but to thwart evaluate fraud.
The proposed rule would prohibit firms from shopping for or promoting fake reviews and suppressing detrimental reviews, in addition to “evaluate hijacking,” which entails repurposing optimistic reviews from one merchandise to be used on different listings, and may make new or questionable merchandise seem reliable. It additionally bars firm executives or insiders from leaving reviews of their services or products with out disclosing their relationships.
“The rule would set off civil penalties for violators and will assist degree the enjoying area for sincere firms,” stated Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a press release.
Fake reviews and evaluate abuse have been a persistent concern for on-line platforms similar to Amazon, Google and Yelp. Bad actors usually depend on fake reviews to increase their merchandise in search outcomes and drive extra gross sales. In some circumstances, firms supply to pay customers to go away detrimental reviews on a competitor’s product, a tactic known as “evaluate sabotage.”
As evaluate fraud has turn into extra prevalent, a shadowy economic system of on-line companies has sprung up promising to provide firms with fake reviews, usually for as little as a few bucks apiece. Some of those companies promote their companies by way of their web site, whereas others set up invite-only Facebook teams and Telegram chats.
Amazon, which has struggled to fight fake reviews on its third-party market, has increasingly gone after fake review brokers and Facebook group administrators in court. It additionally makes use of a mix of human moderators and machine-learning instruments to strive to detect suspicious exercise on its website.
The FTC has more and more cracked down on fake reviews as they “deceive shoppers searching for actual suggestions on a services or products and undercut sincere companies,” the company stated. In February, the FTC introduced its first case in opposition to evaluate hijacking when it fined complement maker Bountiful Co., which makes the favored vitamin model Nature’s Bounty, for utilizing the tactic to increase its Amazon listings.
The company has filed several other cases lately in opposition to firms that used fake reviews to promote merchandise on-line, and blocked their users from leaving detrimental reviews.
In its announcement Friday, the FTC acknowledged that the widespread emergence of generative synthetic intelligence will probably make it simpler for unhealthy actors to write fake reviews. CNBC previously reported that some persons are already utilizing AI chatbots to write reviews on Amazon.
The proposed rule doesn’t take impact instantly. There is a 60-day public remark interval, after which the company might reevaluate the rule based mostly on the feedback it receives. After a while, the FTC will vote on a last model of its proposal.
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