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FTC's rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect

(abcnews.go.com)
613 points indus | 3 comments | 22 Oct 24 15:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.434s | source
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bragr ◴[22 Oct 24 15:27 UTC] No.41915238[source]▶
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/...

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onlyrealcuzzo ◴[22 Oct 24 15:48 UTC] No.41915513[source]▶
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).

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maerF0x0 ◴[22 Oct 24 15:56 UTC] No.41915601[source]▶
This is an important thing to tackle too. Amazon is notorious for allowing shady practices like Sell product A for lots of 5* reviews, then change the product listing to a completely different thing (which may or may not deserve 5) ...

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.

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thechao ◴[22 Oct 24 19:25 UTC] No.41917764[source]▶
If an app pops up a "rate us" modal, it gets a 1-star in the app store, with a note to the developer why. I don't care how great your app is.
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baxtr ◴[22 Oct 24 21:08 UTC] No.41918721[source]▶
As an indie app developer this makes me really sad. We need reviews otherwise we won’t get enough downloads. Big companies can pay huge amounts on ads, we can’t and thus rely on positive reviews and ratings. Fact is that most users won’t rate unless asked.

If you really like an app give it a nice review.

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ikiris ◴[23 Oct 24 04:05 UTC] No.41921709[source]▶
Then don’t be annoying about them. I do the exact same thing that guy talked about. Dark patterns get explicit 1 stars
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Petersipoi ◴[23 Oct 24 04:25 UTC] No.41921813[source]▶
Unfortunately an annoying app will out compete a non-annoying app in terms of reviews. Even if a few people like GP 1-star it, it's still worth it since most will 5 star it.
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idle_zealot ◴[23 Oct 24 05:28 UTC] No.41922092[source]▶
This is the reality, but it's bad. How do we fix it? An App Store policy banning the practice? Global extensions like in web browsers that can use block lists to enable user to hide annoying elements automatically? De-weight reviews from users whose app install orginated from an ad click rather than organically to level the playing field?
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1. rixed ◴[23 Oct 24 12:51 UTC] No.41924545[source]▶
A way to fix the problem would be for the App Store to ban that practice _and_ itself nag the users for ratings, in the less annoying way; like, asking you to rate a list of apps you have been using a lot when you open the App Store, and also asking you to rate when you delete an app.

That would be a win for everyone.

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2. docmars ◴[23 Oct 24 13:46 UTC] No.41925029[source]▶
I came here wanting to say the same thing. It's a lot like Amazon emailing customers periodically to review recent purchases and making it really easy to do it. I pretty often do that and it works! It doesn't feel annoying either because it isn't in my way.

The key is catching the user when they aren't completing a specific task. People often check email to pass time, which is perfect for this.

3. Libcat99 ◴[23 Oct 24 14:10 UTC] No.41925214[source]▶
Not when you open the app store.

The typical app store workflow for me is I visit the store to download a specific app I'd like to install. That app will then have to download and install while I wait.

That "while I wait" is an ideal time to ask me to rate other recently installed apps, or an app I haven't used in a while.