edit: it doesn't seem so. You just have use some weasel language:
>The final rule also bars a business from misrepresenting that the reviews on a review portion of its website represent all or most of the reviews submitted when reviews have been suppressed based upon their ratings or negative sentiment.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-no...
Further down the notice cites the scenario: "[...] more than 4,500 merchants that were automatically publishing only 4- or 5-star consumer reviews"
There are a lot of outfits in Pakistan that recruit reviewers in the US by offering a full refund for Chinese products in exchange for a five star review.
This rule should require disclosure of this behavior and frankly any review that does not originate for a bonafide purchase.
* Step 1, take a product with a terrible rating
* Step 2, create a new SKU for the exact same product so it has no ratings
* Step 3, get a handful of fake 5-star reviews (in some way the FTC isn't going to crack down on)
* Step 4, blast the old terribly reviewed product that now has good reviews on marketing
* Step 5, get 10s of thousands of sales, $$$
* Step 6, let the terrible reviews pour in
Repeat to step 1 (possibly under a different brand name).
Another aspect is review solicitation. eg: ios games often pop up with their own modal of "Rate us" and if you click 5 it redirects you to app store to make a review, if you click 4 or less it redirects you to a feedback form. They grease the path for positive reviewers.
Does the rule apply to private citizens? I wonder if the First Amendment agrees with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience". They may mean that businesses can't engage people to write such reviews.
Also, how will they handle the scale of enforcement? The large companies seem easy - one enforcement action covers all of Yelp, another all of Amazon, etc. But what about the infinite reviews at smaller vendoers?
Overall though, I think this is great and long past due. The lawlessness of the Internet - fraud, spying, etc. - is absurd.
https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/produc...
Maybe I'm wrong but doesn't the first ammended apply to public speech ? Is there some nuances there when a private company is involved and responsible for the content on their platform, in this case reviews? Genuinely never sure of these things for the US.
I get that some products have configurations, like color and size, but often times wildly different products are grouped together.
I guess they don't know about how people scam Amazon reviews by getting legit people to simply buy the product and leave a five star review and then get reimbursed for their purchase later by the company or the company the company hired to get these people to do this.
(From 2022) Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews
https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-...
Wouldn't like to assume but regulatory bodies usually think about these things in advance no ?
> Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed.
> Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it. It prohibits businesses from creating or selling such reviews or testimonials. It also prohibits them from buying such reviews, procuring them from company insiders, or disseminating such testimonials, when the business knew or should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.
I'm sure someone will try to argue that, but the way I interpreted it is that this is not banning people from sharing fake reviews, it's banning businesses from publishing and misrepresenting those reviews as genuine. i.e. It's regulating the business's practices, not the (purported) consumers'.
Because I'm not going to leave a review, don't really leave many reviews. But I'm especially not going to leave a review before I've received service. But if I don't leave a review, I'd be concerned I would be getting deliberately poor service.
And if I'm going to get bad service, why should I subject myself to that?
If anything, I would leave then give a 1 star review saying they give discounts to people who give good reviews beforehand and the explanation I gave above.
Bunch of people report Amazon as being rife with fake reviews. FTC puts together some sort of working group that does some research to figure out if it's true. If it's true, they reach out to Amazon telling them to fix it after handing them a fine. After a while, they verify that Amazon implemented sufficient safe-guards against fake reviews.
Sure, it wouldn't get rid of all fake reviews, but surely it'd be better than the current approach of doing absolutely nothing, no?
This is basically the equivalent of saying "How are you going to stop crime X if they commit crime X in a way that let's them get away with X?"
Either they find a way to enforce the rules against step 3, or they fail to do so. We can't know yet.
Buying Positive or Negative Reviews: The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative. It clarifies that the conditional nature of the offer of compensation or incentive may be expressly or implicitly conveyed.
Or if you bought from a third party seller, but your review is attached to an FBA product, the shipping review has nothing to do with the current item.
Well republicans generally shoot down anything that is pro-consumer at the cost of business profits, even when it's related to consumer awareness or safety, so the only way to get decent pro-consumer rules enacted is when democrats are in power.
> The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
Switching to a seller that ships using fedex or usps would do something. We've had the inverse problem, fedex is the one that always screws up our deliveries and we actively look for sellers that don't use them.
Based on the text you have shared it'd be perfectly fine if you were paid to write a "neutral" review.
People cheer when government makes a rule like this but there is a huge costly enforcement mechanism that goes with this. That has to be implemented and maintained. Making the rule is step one, and there are hundreds more steps that have to happen any number of times, forever. Good luck. Making laws that cannot be enforced just increases the cost of government without having the intended effect. I can't think of anything that the prime offenders would like more than that.
The normalization of blatant lying in business is really frustrating, both as a businessperson and as a member of the public. We (correctly) consider just making shit up for their own benefit a major strike against a person, but we implicitly tolerate it in the companies that run a good chunk of our lives! Hell, in some cases we even celebrate it: "wow, look how scrappy that person is, what a brilliant marketing ploy!" - no, they're just a liar.
Now if only Apple would enforce those (or stop doing them themselves).
Otherwise it should be possible to sort products or even brands/sellers by age and prefer older ones with more reviews.
I'm not sure Amazon does the first though ATM, and it definitely doesn't do the latter.
There's actually a big cloud hanging over the Kamala Harris candidacy over whether or not Lina Khan will remain FTC chair. There's a lot of tech money flooding into her campaign. Though in this case it's also to replace the current SEC chair, because the SEC chair is actually enforcing securities law against crypto fraudsters, who would really like to keep their scam going.
Same with Trump. Big Tech banned him for, y'know, instigating a coup d'etat. But three years later, Big Tech is now trying to wine and dine him, because the FTC is scaring the shit out of Big Tech. You have Tim Cook going to Trump and Trump saying how he's going to stop the EU from attacking US companies. Hell, Elon Musk bought Twitter just so he could turn it into an arm of the Trump candidacy. And who knows what Mark Zuckerberg thinks. Likewise, with the SEC stuff, Trump used to be a (rightful) big critic of crypto, until he realized he could make money selling tacky NFTs of himself, and is now also trying to get in on that crypto money.
And thankfully so.
Chocolate cake recipe, needing a lot of butter, sugar, eggs, etc.
And below it a one star review "I only replaced the eggs with aquafaba, put in just a third of sugar and a third of oil to make it healthier, used cocoa poweder instead of baking chocolate, and it was horrible, hard, clumpy, didn't taste good at all, never making this again, 1 star!"
I’m glad they’re trying. It remains to be seen how this’ll sort out.
Then again, when I was much younger, I had a backpacking can opener that was useful when hiking in places where sometimes buying canned foods made sense. It was about as large as a very large postage stamp, and crazy good for the size and weight. I wouldn't want to use it at home (much), but it was awesome when I had to carry it around.
So, even for can openers, the story can be complicated.
Also, assuming that the primary purpose of an F350 is towing is ... interesting. Lots and lots of them here in rural NM (as much as anyway, anyway), and they are rarely towing anything.
> It also prohibits them from ... disseminating such testimonials, when the business ... should have known that the reviews or testimonials were fake or false.
Many of the Amazon fake review practices are extremely in the "should have known" category.
Insurance against the argument that "This person who wrote the review does exist, just not in a flesh body, they're an AI creation." But that might also be an instant-flop argument legally since I'm sure "personhood" has some definition near-future AI can't hope to approach.
It's a convoluted problem with no good answer so far.
SnazzyLabs is a good example - he should be well within the criteria for Apple to be sending him iPhones and Macs early, but I can only assume Apple thinks he's too critical when he finds an issue he doesn't like. Thus he has to buy his review units on street release date along with everyone else. How many people are giving less critical reviews because of that?
Honestly - Amazon really needs some serious lawsuits to force it to stop being such a bad actor in the online retail space.
If you pay me I can write the same using 1000 pages without adding anything useful.
Letting something that is 1% of operating hours for a device drive requirements strongly is often a mistake. With some obvious exceptions because e.g. I cannot choose when I am going to engage in maximum braking and defer it to a different vehicle.
> [1] The final rule announced today follows an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and a notice of proposed rulemaking announced in November 2022 and June 2023, respectively. The FTC also held an informal hearing on the proposed rule in February 2024.
[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
> The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services, or that misrepresent the experience of the person giving it.
In the ruling in which they self-ordained these new powers, Gorsuch confused nitrous oxide with nitrogen oxide, five times. Better hope Gorsuch didn't rule on dental anesthetics on your next visit to the dentist.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supreme-court...
I tow stuff about a dozen times a year and live in a city. I drive a Tahoe because not being able to tow when you want to is a pretty big inconvenience even though I’m a single occupant driver 90% of the time and it’s way bigger than I “need”. Turns out it’s quite comfortable and I just like it, even if I wasn’t towing ever.
I went years of renting vehicles just to tow. It sucks in a lot of ways. No one just wakes up and thinks “I’m going to tow some stuff”. You’re doing it for a reason, there’s probably a high amount of labor involved in that reason, trying to do it all in the rental window or find an appropriate vehicle on the day you need it. Is a challenge. I’ve set rental reservations then it rains so I can’t do the work I needed to. Clear skies tomorrow but have to wait a week for another rental to be available. It’s a hassle.
Another thing I struggle with is my towing needs fluctuate a lot. Earlier this year I was doing a construction project and ended up needing to tow stuff practically every day for 6 weeks. If I tried to do that any other way than owning a capable vehicle, it’d have been logistically challenging. Trying to time vehicle rental with trailer and equipment rentals would have dragged the construction project out to easily triple the time just by adding delay, probably much longer. Not to mention the cost of it all. Which the bigger vehicles do cost more, but they are assets even if depreciating. When you rent it’s pure expense. The rent cs own calc can flip quickly.
I'd just say rent something for that one off time in its entire ownership. Otherwise, I'd be daily driving a 26' box truck because I moved apartments every few years.
One time I had to ship a few pallets of stuff across the country. I guess I should have just bought a semi-trailer truck as a daily driver.
Amazon are being a bunch of cheap bastards and skimping on human moderation of product listings - we, as a society, don't need to give them a free pass for trying to make an even more enormous profit. This is only deeply unprofitable to moderate if you have a lot of products listed you're never going to sell any of.
Fake or False Consumer Reviews, Consumer Testimonials, and Celebrity Testimonials: The final rule addresses reviews and testimonials that misrepresent that they are by someone who does not exist, such as AI-generated fake reviews, or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services
If you covertly switch the product, then the reviews shown are from people who did not have actual experience with the product.
edit: after RTFM, page 42, coupons are considered valuable:
> For the reasons explained in this section, the Commission is finalizing the definition of “purchase a consumer review” to mean to provide something of value, such as money, gift certificates, products, services, discounts, coupons, contest entries, or another review, in exchange for a consumer review.
Here the person was saying "once in the entirety of your ownership". If it's really once in the vehicle's life, then you really should rent something else when you need this.
I understand renting vehicles to move stuff is a PITA. I've used the hardware store's trucks several times and it adds a lot of anxiety to a project (though I've never had a really tough time with availability).
I'm pretty sure getting caught for trying to frame a company for buying reviews would bring criminal charges that are more serious than the FTC enforcement action.
Suddenly we now have a ton of "new" issues cropping up everywhere. Suddenly being last 20-ish years. These aren't "new". They're just difficult to automate with a computer program, and every company is cheapo now and tries to automate everything with a computer program.
This problem doesn't exist at, say, Walmart. Presumably they physically vet products to at least some degree.
I think that document is specifically about taxes and coupons. It is not intended to define "compensation" for every statue in California and certainly not for federally issued rules from the FTC.
Even then, that rule is about whether the coupon issuer is compensated when a coupon is used, NOT about if a customer is compensated if they are given a coupon.
- Some disgruntled people at company's could leak directly, which would make engaging in this behavior riskier
- Random individuals or competing companies could monitor product reviews and report. For example, show that an Amazon product ID used to be for another product 3 months ago when reviews were written.
I'm optimistic. There are a lot of regulations (including digital regulations) that everyone ends up following even if the government isn't monitoring things themselves. The risk of penalty just needs to be high enough, and hopefully places like Amazon realize the downside/penalty of fake reviews now makes it worth policing.
It obviously won't help your "first impression" review problem but that's not the intent of the law and not sure why the government would be involved in that. A lot of movies don't hold up well on a rewatch, too. If you are that particular about buying something that lasts X years then you can seek out dedicated advice blogs/youtube channels.
Of course they want it. It's purely objective for them and purely deceptive to the consumer. Therefore, it's the perfect thing for the FTC to regulate - I mean this is what their purpose is.
Enforcement will be difficult, but I really think platforms like Amazon isn't the problem. They're a unified platform, it's pretty easy for them to enforce better review. Maybe you need to have actually bought the product, maybe they monitor product descriptions for asking for reviews, maybe they audit packages for those little "review us 5 stars!" slips, maybe they prevent modifying products, etc.
The true tough thing to enforce is little shops. You know, convenience stores, smoke shops, that type. I've been told, verbally, many times that if I review 5 stars, I get some discount. I doubt the FTC will send physical agents to check that.
Amazon has had this rule in place for a long time and I still get cards in the boxes of the stuff I buy, "Give us a 5 star review and get 30% off your next purchase!"
Clearly Amazon doesn't know about this or isn't generally enforcing it. I'm wondering how the FTC is going to patrol this since Amazon has already had this rule in place for a while and it hasn't dissuaded sellers from changing their habits.
Occasionally I still rent, sometimes I need a bigger truck than I have due to weight.
Abuse problems? Give more weight to squawks by people with a lot of purchases and not a lot of what are found to be bogus gripes.
The FTC continues to do the good, thankless work of making good public policy. I appreciate it.
Unfortunately Apple doesn’t seem to care unless the rule is really good for Apple.
However I've never found a truck I can rent to two. Sure I can rent trucks, but they come up with a large pile of fine print which says I cannot two. Even those box trucks cannot tow, or can tow but only their trailer which has specific restrictions on what you can use it for. Oh, and the trailer they allow you to use has surge brakes which are terrible.
Let me reverse this on you, how much and what type of punishment and penalty should be levied if laws are broken?
Like this false online reviews ruling, how far should punishment and penalty go?
> with penalizing private citizens "who don’t have experience with the business or
> product/services, or misrepresent their experience". They may mean that
> businesses can't engage people to write such reviews.
The First Amendment doesn't typically protect your right to commit fraud, no.
Walmart’s online store has some similar problems. But you maybe it $5 to lost a product, $10 to change it, problem solved. Now you can hire real humans.
Which is to say there is some political differences, but don't make such accusations before you carefully check to ensure it isn't just your bias to observe more when democrats are in power and thus see more.
Of course can't hold foreign marketplaces responsible at all - but that is a different loophole we can close (if it becomes a problem Amazon will ensure it is)
The disdain for expertise is something I would not expect on HN, but here we are.
Remember you don't need to get everyone doing this. Even a few cases that your get on the nightly news will be enough to stop a large majority of fraud. You just need to get enough that everyone else decides not to do this.
Depends on the impact of the crime the person was convicted of and how likely they are to do it again.
> how far should punishment and penalty go?
For companies who knowingly solicit or publish fake/compensated reviews: disgorgement of profits and refunds without conditions to everyone who asks. Repeated violations come with escalating fines that are a percentage of revenue (not profits) plus bans on company officers holding the position of officer of a publicly traded company for a number of years.
The FTC can say it's illegal to do X, and all companies can do X with impunity if the FTC, in practice, does not do anything about it when companies do X.
> 4.5.4 ... Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
The worst offender is DoorDash. If you turn off push ads, after you place an order it will prompt you to turn on notifications "to get the latest on your order". Agreeing turns on ads. You get the prompt even if you already have order update notifications enabled.
But, I think most online buying in the US goes through Amazon and maybe a couple other online retailers. Fix it there and you fixed the problem for 90% of cases.
I guess it is still better than most companies that will find whatever reason they can not to replace faulty equipment.
And most of all, don’t make global generalizations on commentary that is quite specific and on a very particular topic.
But to be honest the vast majority of times I've needed to rent a truck to tow something it's because I was renting something towable. I can't imagine I'd bother renting some equipment from one place just to rent a truck from someplace else.
In fact, it's not like one needs some giant truck to tow many things. The vehicle I've owned that had the most use out of its tow hitch was a Ford Focus. I've gotten a bit of use from my midsize crossover which has 5,000lbs of tow capacity. More than enough for a small boat or jet skis or a small trailer.
But that's all beside the point. This has nothing to do with how much "expertise" the courts or the bureaucrats running the FTC may or may not have, or how corrupt they may or may not be. Even if these agencies were 100% competent and well meaning, giving any one of them unchecked power would still be a bad idea. There are very good reasons why the legislative, judicial, and executive branches are separate. Chevron concentrated the powers of all three into the hands of individual bureaucrats at the heads of government agencies (and therefore ultimately, into the hands of the president, whoever that happens to be at the time). The agencies were allowed to make law (delegation doctrine), interpret the law (chevron), and enforce the law (their proper function as part of the executive branch).
No one person should be allowed to have all the infinity stones at once, regardless of how much expertise they have.
So you end up in some new equilibrium. Maybe that equilibrium is better, maybe it's worse, but it's simply not true that it's always better to do something rather than nothing, and pointing out the loopholes in the rules is valid criticism.
For positive reviews, a business will figure out customers who they already know had a positive experience (quick delivery, continuous usage, etc) and only send them invites to review. This is perfectly legal and the fundamental business model of many review websites - selling the ability to push invites and “manage” reviews.
For negative reviews - no business wants these, and customers with bad experiences are likely to post them by themselves.
What gets left out is the average experience because reviews are essentially cherry picked from the head and tail ends of the normal curve of experiences. This doesn’t render reviews useless, of course. Having a large number of positive reviews is still a positive signal but it is nowhere close to free from manipulation.
If you really like an app give it a nice review.
They proposed including review hijacking. There's probably a reason why they didn't include it. Or maybe they think the rules they included already cover it.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/...
They probably came to different conclusions as you. And I'm sure they have reasons why they left some of that stuff on the original list out. Because they spent 2 years looking at this rather than going with their "obvious first impression questions".
You'll also note from those links that they have already been pursuing some companies over this stuff. So they're probably aware of what they're up against.
Eventually the scammers will be isolated such that they're just paying each other to lie to each other, meanwhile the rest of us can be authentic with each other: we need to learn trust hygiene and bake it into our apps.
Not one has ever conditioned it on expressing a certain sentiment, rating, or anything at all.
But I think most people feel strongly enough they should leave a positive review in exchange for money. It doesn't even need to be said.
And while moderating things like social media at scale has a lot of challenges, moderating product pages does not. There are orders of magnitude less of them, and they don't need to change that often.
Because you're free to post as many false reviews on your own personal blog. Nobody is silencing your views.
But a product page is not allowed to publish those views. And businesses have never had first amendment rights to publish falsehoods.
It's no different from ingredient listings on food. There's no first amendment right for a business to lie about the ingredients.
I sell a product there and some of my competitors are doing those things I listed. Their reviews are also very obviously fake. I’ve also received some obviously fake negative reviews. I’m not really holding out any hope that it’ll get better anytime soon.
I just reduced my Amazon advertising spend so I can focus on other channels. Also a little bit out of spite.
Personally, I'd rather see you add a small UI element somewhere, or a banner that appears briefly but critically doesn't cover up any controls. If you absolutely MUST use a pop up, you know when the best time to do that is? After I've completed some in app purchase. If I'm spending money on your product, chances are I'm moderately satisfied with it and feeling pretty good about it at that moment. Or if you don't have in app purchases, unless you've made a "content browsing only" app, you probably have some workflows that have a definite end state. Prompt me then, at the end of me doing what I've come to your app to do. But I've never once given a review / stars to any app that has interrupted me in the middle of or at the start of doing something.
I haven't lost anything from blocking the rest, and I'm not about to start allowing now.
"Notif" because it's Not a question of If I will allow them, also because it's not worthy of being called by a full and proper name.