{"id":3765,"date":"2015-10-23T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=3765"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:33","slug":"buyer-beware-do-not-believe-everything-you-hear-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/buyer-beware-do-not-believe-everything-you-hear-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Buyer Beware: Do Not Believe Everything You Hear on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more popular online shopping and other online transactions have become, the more Internet users rely on online customer reviews in order to make informed purchasing decisions. Sites like Amazon provide a section for reviews in order to assist consumers in shopping with confidence. It is generally assumed that reviewers are genuine and truthful, and are writing the review in order to inform potential purchasers about the product or service. Unfortunately, the commissioning of paid, fake reviews that charade as testimonials from ordinary consumers\u2014 sometimes referred to as \u201castroturfing\u201d\u2014appears to be a growing practice<\/a>.
\nAmazon filed suit<\/a> on October 12, against 1,114\u00a0people who allegedly offered to be fake reviewers for hire at five dollars a review. Defendants \u201cwere selling their services on Fiverr.com, a website where people can sell such services\u00a0as designing a logo, editing a resume, creating a fan web page or transcribing audio.\u201d An Amazon investigation discovered 1,114\u00a0people on Fiverr allegedly offering to write fake Amazon reviews. Most offenders promised positive or five-star reviews. Allegedly, some offenders even offered to have the seller write the review, which the offender would then post.
\n\u201cAmazon is suing for unspecified damages and an order forcing the users to stop writing fake reviews.\u201d Amazon says that the offenders are liable<\/a> for breach of contract for violating Amazon\u2019s terms of service. Currently, the defendants are only identified by their online handles, but Amazon is working to determine their real names.
\nAmazon has not been the only big company affected. Companies like Yelp and TripAdvisor are also targets<\/a> for merchants to easily post positive reviews of their own businesses. However, Amazon\u2019s lawsuit appears to be one of the most forceful efforts so far by a major U.S. e-commerce company to fight against phony reviews. By suing the reviewers, Amazon is attempting to discourage this deceitful practice.
\nCompanies have significant incentives to hire fake reviewers<\/a>. According to Forrester Research, approximately forty-five percent of consumers consider product reviews when considering an online purchase. According to Nielsen Media Research, two-thirds of consumers trust online consumer opinions. For some companies, especially small businesses, it may even be more economical to pay for positive reviews than to buy advertising.
\nAmazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and other sites have attempted to prevent the planting of fake reviews. Amazon spokesperson, Julie Law, says that Amazon continues to use numerous mechanisms<\/a> to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate guidelines. Amazon terminates accounts that abuse the system and the company takes legal action. Amazon, Yelp, and TripAdvisor use computer algorithms and investigator teams to search reviews and delete suspicious entries.
\nAnother way that Amazon attempts to thwart phony reviews is by allowing only consumers who have purchased something on Amazon (\u201cverified customers<\/a>\u201d) to write a review. However, offenders have found creative ways around this; for example, by using a promo code<\/a> to get the product for free or by offering to receive an empty envelope<\/a> from a seller to make it look as if the person had actually bought the product. Thus, apparently, even \u201cverified\u201d reviews can be hacked.
\nYelp reveals that approximately twenty-five per cent<\/a> of the reviews it receives are fake and never published. According to Yelp director of business outreach, Darnell Holloway, Yelp places a \u201cconsumer alert<\/a>\u201d badge on a company\u2019s Yelp site for ninety days when suspicious reviews are found. This warns consumers that reviews may be deceptive. If the problem continues, Yelp removes all of that company\u2019s reviews.
\nGartner Research estimates that approximately ten to fifteen percent of all online reviews are fake and experts predict that fraudulent reviews are not going away<\/a> anytime soon. So far, legal recourse has been uncommon. However, in April<\/a> of 2015, Amazon sued several websites that offered to produce positive reviews. According to that lawsuit, most of those sites have now closed and Amazon has “identified and taken action<\/a>” against sellers who used those sites to get fake reviews. The Federal Trade Commission<\/a> (FTC) has filed several suits because of fake reviews as well. For example, in 2011, a company selling a popular series of guitar-lesson DVDs was made to pay $250,000 to settle FTC charges<\/a> that \u201cit deceptively advertised its products through online affiliate marketers who falsely posed as ordinary consumers or independent reviewers.\u201d Also in 2013, \u201cthe New York attorney general\u2019s office settled cases with nineteen companies and secured $350,000 in penalties for fake reviews.\u201d During the investigation, the Attorney General’s office found that \u201cmany of these companies used techniques to hide their identities<\/a>, such as creating fake online profiles on consumer review websites and paying freelance writers from as far away as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe for $1 to $10 per review.\u201d This production of fake reviews \u201cviolated multiple state laws against false advertising and engaged in illegal and deceptive business practices.\u201d
\nIn the current suit, Amazon is targeting the actual writers<\/a> of the reviews. Amazon’s suit, filed in King County Superior court in Seattle, stated that fake reviews mislead Amazon customers and tarnish Amazon’s brand<\/a>. According to Jenny Sussin<\/a>, a research director with Gartner research, this lawsuit may help to slow the flow of fake reviews by instilling fear in people that they could be caught and have to pay a fine.
\nAmazon explained that, “While small in number, these reviews can significantly undermine the trust<\/a> that consumers and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers place in Amazon, which in turn tarnishes Amazon’s brand.\u201d Sussin says that lawsuits need to be filed against the manufacturers<\/a> who are hiring people to create the fake reviews because this is a deceptive practice. Also, while sites like Fiverr enable manufacturers to contract for fake review services, manufacturers are also carrying out actions that are inherently wrong.<\/p>\n

While companies like Amazon and Yelp are taking measures to rid their sites of fake reviews and deter potential fake reviewers, consumers should also take on the responsibility of carefully and critically reading and evaluating reviews.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Once again, we are reminded that our parents were right when they said, \u201cDon\u2019t believe everything you read on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The more popular online shopping and other online transactions have become, the more Internet users rely on online customer reviews in order to make informed purchasing decisions. Sites like Amazon provide a section for reviews in order to assist consumers in shopping with confidence. It is generally assumed that reviewers are genuine and truthful, and …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7272,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions\/7272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}