Bogus online reviews are targeted by U.S. regulators with new, proposed bans

WASHINGTON –

U.S. federal regulators wish to crack down on pretend opinions and different misleading web practices.

The Federal Trade Commission proposed a brand new rule Friday that might ban paying for opinions, suppressing trustworthy opinions, promoting pretend social media engagement and extra. Businesses would even be prohibited from working company-controlled web sites that declare to be unbiased, and different misleading practices like “review hijacking,” which makes opinions for one product appear as if they had been written for considerably completely different ones.

If the proposed rule is accepted, following a 60-day public remark interval, violators might face hefty penalties.

“Our proposed rule on fake reviews shows that we’re using all available means to attack deceptive advertising in the digital age,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, mentioned in a press release. “The rule would trigger civil penalties for violators and should help level the playing field for honest companies.”

In Friday’s discover to proposed rulemaking, the FTC famous that it already considers pretend opinions and different misleading actions to be illegal — however that the brand new bans “may increase deterrence against these practices,” enable for civil penalties and assist get monetary compensation to victims, the company mentioned.

Estimates in regards to the portion of opinions on-line which can be pretend vary from 4% to greater than 30%, in accordance with researchers on the University of Southern California, Los Angeles’ Anderson School of Management. According to 2021 numbers from the World Economic Forum and CHEQ, pretend opinions influence some $152 billion in world spending annually.

In addition to FTC efforts to deal with pretend opinions previously — which embody multi-million-dollar settlements with on-line retailers — extra corporations say they’re now taking misleading on-line practices significantly.

In July of final yr, for instance, Amazon filed a lawsuit towards directors of greater than 10,000 Facebook teams it accused of coordinating pretend opinions in trade for cash or free merchandise — and on Tuesday, the corporate introduced 4 extra lawsuits “against fraudsters attempting to mislead Amazon customers and harm Amazon selling partners by facilitating fake reviews.”

Earlier this month, Google introduced authorized motion towards a “bad actor” who posted over 350 fraudulent Google Business profiles and tried to spice up them with greater than 14,000 pretend opinions, the corporate mentioned.

The FTC’s Friday proposal follows the company’s November announcement to discover rulemaking.