The FTC orders Sitejabber to cease faking product opinions

The Federal Commerce Fee has charged Sitejabber, a web based evaluate platform, with violating its new faux opinions guidelines through the use of point-of-sale opinions to misrepresent what prospects take into consideration merchandise. In certainly one of its first enforcement actions beneath new guidelines banning corporations from making or promoting faux opinions, the FTC is ordering the corporate to cease.

The FTC says Sitejabber “deceptively” punched up companies’ evaluate counts by incorporating responses to point-of-sale questionnaires asking prospects to fee and evaluate their purchasing expertise, earlier than they’d truly gotten any services or products. It additionally alleges that by giving its purchasers instruments to publish that suggestions on their very own websites, Sitejabber enabled them to mislead individuals to suppose the rankings and opinions had been based mostly on precise expertise with what the businesses had been promoting.

The FTC now forbids Sitejabber from “misrepresenting, or helping anybody else in misrepresenting” that such opinions are based mostly on buyer expertise with a services or products. The corporate can be barred from serving to different corporations misrepresent the opinions that “it collects, moderates, or shows.”

The regulator’s new anti-fake evaluate guidelines, which went into impact final month, intention to deal with AI-generated opinions on-line, together with on Amazon and different e-commerce websites. The FTC prohibits a swath of misleading practices, equivalent to providing incentives to go away suggestions or making a faux evaluate web site that appears impartial however is definitely owned by the very firm that makes the merchandise being reviewed. Or at the very least, it is going to for the following couple of months, after which the following US President might be sworn in and (most likely) change its management — and we’ll see what occurs subsequent.