FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

Does the regulation say anything about deceptively moderating reviews? e.g. deleting all the low star reviews?

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/...

How does this stop one of the most common practices?

* 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).

Well step 3 is the part they just made illegal. If you are OK with breaking the law, nothing is going to stop you until you get caught and fined. Presumably the getting caught and fined part will be enough deterrent.

what qualifies a review as fake? If I write it, it's a review isn't it? The whole thing is subjective. Plenty of people love products I can't stand

And how do they even audit it? Do they require only users who verifiably used/purchased the product to submit reviews? Do they require the reviewer to actually use the product? for sufficient amount of time so that the review is more than just "first impression"? So many loopholes, this won't change anything except perhaps a few big marketplaces but it's doubtful they will be able to police it

That's actually a really good point. I can review a can opener in a few minutes. Either it opens the can or it doesn't. How would I ever review something like a Ford F-350? I don't even have a trailer heavy enough to test the towing capacity.

Well, that's a bad example ... The can opener I had for the first 50 years of my life left a dangerous crazy sharp metal edge around the opening which I cut myself on more than once. The Oxo can opener I've had for the last 10 years rolls the edge as it cuts and removes the entire top of the can; what's left is extremely safe, at least by comparison with the old style.

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.

Not debating the practicality here, but even if you need your truck to do something only once in the entirety of your ownership, it needs to be capable of this all the time. Towing, crawling, etc.

I disagree. I've never had a vehicle that does 100% of whatever I'd want a vehicle to do. At some point we need to make tradeoffs and accept that we'll either have limitations or need to solve some problems in a different way.

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.

They do make trade offs. Just not the same you might make. The F350s are limited on where they can park and are a pain in the ass to drive around a city. Some people tow stuff more frequently than they go into the city though, so it probably is a reasonable trade off to them. Also comes with some other perks like comfort and more beefy off road capabilities. Something that is valuable in rural areas even without towing.

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.

Sure. I'm not saying it's completely unreasonable.

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).