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FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

(abcnews.go.com)
613 points indus | 2 comments | 22 Oct 24 15:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.482s | source
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mmooss ◴[22 Oct 24 15:59 UTC] No.41915635[source]▶
> the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience.

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.

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1. bilekas ◴[22 Oct 24 16:02 UTC] No.41915659[source]▶
> 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"

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.

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2. acdha ◴[23 Oct 24 13:08 UTC] No.41924698[source]▶
It does, but this isn’t personal speech but corporate. I can say that buying an iPhone makes me smarter and irresistibly attractive and it’s covered by the first amendment, but it becomes corporate speech once Apple pays me to say that and is thus subject regulation about honesty and disclosure. This is noticeable in ads for things like athletic products – even if it’s a pro athlete they very publicly sponsor, the claims tend to be things like saying they only run in those shoes or some sports drink is part of their training because they don’t want a legal situation because it sounded too much like “Nike said I could run a 4 minute mile if I bought their shoe!”

Review curation is an especially good target for this because the question isn’t the speech but rather whose speech is promoted. Nobody gets in trouble if they accept testimonials and only use positive ones in ads because consumers know those aren’t unbiased but a review page which looks like anyone can post there is making a different promise.