FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October
Amazon sued more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators in July 2022 for allegedly brokering fake reviews.
Along with prohibiting reviews written by nonhumans, the FTC’s rule also forbids companies from paying for either positive or negative reviews to falsely boost or denigrate a product. It also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.
Violations of the rule could result in fines being issued for each violation, according to the rule. This means that for an e-commerce site with hundreds of thousands of reviews, penalties for fake or manipulated reviews could quickly add up.
So how are they going to detect, proof, and enforce?
unclear (they don't tend to announce enforcement mechanisms in these and it's not a final rule until it's a final rule), but it's not like the FTC is lacking in power as an agency
Well, that is until the Chevron decision got knocked down.
LOL at the comments suggesting nothing should be done because this is hard to enforce.
That reasoning is why we don't have legal abortion, universal health care, a living wage, or term limits.
Some things may be hard to do. It's no excuse not to try.
For sure. It'll never be enforced completely, but it gives teeth to go after some big offenders.
Their heart is in the right place, but good luck doing anything about it
Gotta start somewhere I guess. And it's a path in the right direction, at least.
it's not hard to find them when they're selling fake reviews as a service
The article teaser beginning should make that clear as well
Amazon sued more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators in July 2022
Extremely based, good job FTC
She's killing it! Bravo! someone in government with a moral compass🙌
Lina Khan is fantastic.
Wish this woman could be our president.
How long before Trump publicly rants about this?
i'm honestly not sure Trump knows anything about the FTC, and if his campaign was smart these are the kinds of things they'd propose instead of "IVF should be illegal but also you're a degenerate for not having children"
I can already see it: "They're gonna give everyone healthcare, they're gonna jail review scammers, they're gonna let anyone join a union. The monsters."