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 brand new rule that seeks to ban faux on-line critiques, marking its most aggressive step but to thwart evaluation fraud.
The proposed rule would prohibit firms from shopping for or promoting faux critiques and suppressing damaging critiques, in addition to “review hijacking,” which includes repurposing optimistic critiques 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 critiques of their services or products with out disclosing their relationships.
“The rule would trigger civil penalties for violators and should help level the playing field for honest companies,” mentioned Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a press release.
Fake critiques and evaluation abuse have been a persistent subject for on-line platforms similar to Amazon, Google and Yelp. Bad actors usually depend on faux critiques to spice up their merchandise in search outcomes and drive extra gross sales. In some instances, firms provide to pay customers to depart damaging critiques on a competitor’s product, a tactic known as “review sabotage.”
As evaluation fraud has turn into extra prevalent, a shadowy economic system of on-line companies has sprung up promising to provide firms with faux critiques, usually for as little as a couple of bucks apiece. Some of those companies promote their companies by way of their web site, whereas others arrange invite-only Facebook teams and Telegram chats.
Amazon, which has struggled to fight faux critiques on its third-party market, has more and more gone after faux evaluation brokers and Facebook group directors in courtroom. It additionally makes use of a mixture of human moderators and machine-learning instruments to attempt to detect suspicious exercise on its web site.
The FTC has more and more cracked down on faux critiques as they “deceive consumers looking for real feedback on a product or service and undercut honest businesses,” the company mentioned. In February, the FTC introduced its first case in opposition to evaluation hijacking when it fined complement maker Bountiful Co., which makes the favored vitamin model Nature’s Bounty, for utilizing the tactic to spice up its Amazon listings.
The company has filed a number of different instances lately in opposition to firms that used faux critiques to promote merchandise on-line, and blocked their customers from leaving damaging critiques.
In its announcement Friday, the FTC acknowledged that the widespread emergence of generative synthetic intelligence will doubtless make it simpler for unhealthy actors to jot down faux critiques. CNBC beforehand reported that some persons are already utilizing AI chatbots to jot down critiques 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 primarily based on the feedback it receives. After a while, the FTC will vote on a last model of its proposal.
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Source: www.cnbc.com