I had a filmmaker pal who created a horror/sci-fi flick that was truly dreadful. When the time came to sell the film on Amazon as a DVD release, he recruited friends to write five-star reviews praising the film’s alleged brilliance. As a result, his obscure film received a glut of glowing praise.
But one person called out this chicanery when an Amazon reviewer who hated the film cited the excessive positive feedback. “When the DVD’s listing first appeared here on Amazon, an email was sent out for everyone to post reviews,” said this individual. “When the negative review was posted, another email was sent out telling us to ‘bury it.’”
On the flip side, there are multiple examples of businesses that are falsely showered with negative online reviews. This was most notable when Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 sparked a tsunami of negative reviews for Trump-branded hospitality venues. Stuart Wall, the former CEO of Signpost, a marketing software company that tracks online reviews, told NPR in 2017, “There were about 160 one-star reviews written for Trump properties in the month of February [2017] alone.”
This summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a new rule designed to forcefully combat fake reviews and testimonials. The FTC was vague regarding how it would investigate the fake reviews — it appears it will happen on a case-by-case basis — but it was clear that penalties would be sought.
“By strengthening the FTC’s toolkit to fight deceptive advertising, the final rule will protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Having the federal government step in to penalize phony review authors is a mixed blessing. On one hand, who is going to be investigated? No parameters have been publicly announced on which parties will be pursued.
On the other hand, maybe the FTC’s presence will spur the review sites to do a better job of rooting out fraudulent critiques. After all, the FTC didn’t say if those sites would also be held responsible for publishing fake reviews.
Perhaps fake reviews would disappear if the online authors were required to publish their real names and email addresses along with their critiques, which the review sites would verify before publication. And maybe the review sites could ask for evidence that the reviewer is a consumer of the product or service being critiqued — a receipt is the easiest proof to provide.
Whatever the solution will be, one thing is certain — it is long overdue. After all, my filmmaker friend’s chicanery was nearly 20 years ago, and things have not gotten better with time.
