Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You

[SecularMotion]

Source: NY Times

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” wrote Walt Whitman, America’s great bard of self-promotion. As the world goes ever more digital, quite a few businesses are adopting that philosophy — hiring a veritable chorus of touts to sing their nonexistent praises and lure in customers.

New York regulators will announce on Monday the most comprehensive crackdown to date on deceptive reviews on the Internet. Agreements have been reached with 19 companies to cease their misleading practices and pay a total of $350,000 in penalties.

The yearlong investigation encompassed companies that create fake reviews as well as the clients that buy them. Among those signing the agreements are a charter bus operator, a teeth-whitening service, a laser hair-removal chain and an adult entertainment club. Also signing are several reputation-enhancement firms that place fraudulent reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo.

A phony review of a restaurant may lead to a bad meal, which is disappointing. But the investigation uncovered a wide range of services buying fake reviews that could do more permanent damage: dentists, lawyers, even an ultrasound clinic.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/technology/give-yourself-4-stars-online-it-might-cost-you.html?hp&_r=0

[NealK]

1. K&R n/t

[Scurrilous]

2. K & R

[MrNJ]

3. If you can't trust an pseudonymous review on the internet

who can you trust?

[RushIsRot]

4. He who tooteth not his own horn getteth his horn not tooted.

[roguevalley]

11. may I huggeth you? That was brilliant. th. :D:D:D:D:D

[oberliner]

5. This is idiotic

If you engaged with a company based on a good review that is phony, go online yourself and write a truthful one. This is over-regulation.

[alp227]

16. And what recourse do you have if you're HARMED by the company?

This is a libertarian talking point from Reason.com today you just posted.

[christx30]

17. If you were physically harmed

By a company, you can sue for liability if you went to a mini-golf place that the owner's aunt said was great, but the courses were crap and the balls were slightly egg shaped, do you really have a case?

[oberliner]

21. A libertarian talking point?

It's just my opinion. I can't help it if libertarians agree with me. A lot of libertarians opposed bombing Syria too.

If you are harmed by the company then you have the same recourse you would have if you were harmed by a company that didn't have reviews posted online.

[sendero]

18. No..

... being a liar is idiotic. And posting a bogus review is a LIE.

[oberliner]

22. I disagree

Basically everyone in advertising is a liar to some extent.

[geek tragedy]

23. Fraud is fraud. nt

[Egnever]

25. Then we need to take a much closer look at advertising.

I dont think I have ever got a sandwich anywhere that looked like the ones shown in the ads for said place. They should all be fined!

[HERVEPA]

26. Nope. It's your libertarian talking point that's idiotic.

[oberliner]

27. It's not a talking point

It's just my opinion. I can't help it if libertarians agree. They agree that bombing Syria is a bad idea too, as I mentioned. Does that mean anyone who expresses that sentiment is promoting a libertarian talking point as well?

[groundloop]

6. I wonder if this will be overturned on 1st amendment grounds

While I totally agree with the concept that it's wrong to knowingly lie (whether it's Faux News doing it or these phony reviewers), the Supreme Court might not necessarily see it that way. I can certainly imagine the right wing court saying that these phony reviewers are within their rights to say anything they damned well please, even though they were paid to lie.

[Posteritatis]

13. Commercial fraud isn't protected. (nt)

[Enrique]

7. what about reccing bad DU threads?

i propose the death penalty but that might be too harsh.

[PoliticAverse]

10. Bring back the unrec!! n/t

[geek tragedy]

24. Only if they're your own bad DU thread. nt

[onehandle]

8. I give this thread Five Stars.

Skinner, I trust my check is in the mail?

[formercia]

9. This Country runs on Bullshit.

You would expect anything else?

[olddad56]

14. And everyone who lives in it is part of the bullshit in one way or another.

[sendero]

19. Yes..

... but some of us a lot more than others.

[Posteritatis]

12. I've long since just assumed that any star ratings online are astroturfed

Or at least done by people who have no contact with the product, venue, etc. If someone gets in the news for whatever reason, they'll get a mass of one or five-star ratings from people who dislike or like whatever they did, and any kind of commercial project these days is usually tied at the hip with reputation management firms.

[Warpy]

15. I don't go by the rave reviews.

I head right for the complainers. They're the ones who will tell you that a restaurant has slow service or a consumer item breaks quickly. Of course, this means sorting through a lot of people who grumble that an item arrived with smashed packaging or something superficial wrong and those who complain because wait staff didn't kiss their butts. Sometimes there are legitimate complaints, a lot of them, and those need to be heeded.

I've always assumed rave reviews were paid reviews, but if something or someone or someplace has a lot of four star reviews, it's probably good.

[sendero]

20. Any time there are numerous reviews...

... (I'm talking mostly restaurants and certain products) I find that if you read them all the impression you get will be pretty close. There are always the outliers whose expectations are ridiculous and you can usually spot them by a careful reading of the review.

I agree with you that the negative reviews are often more interesting than the positive and I always read them first. And I've been suspicious of reviews that seem to make "marketing points" as I suspect that most of those reviews were not written by an actual customer.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

28. I think however, people are more likely to complain than praise

If a product doesn't work the way someone expected or wanted it to, or they got what they considered a bad meal....I think they are far more likely to go to the net to complain rather than seek out a chance to praise the product that did what it was supposed to or the meal they liked.

[sendero]

29. That's probably true..

... but in my case if I find a new restaurant that I really like, I always go and give it an up review. There are so few good restaurants around here

[arikara]

30. I always read the negative reviews first

as they give more information, then parse the positive ones carefully. I've noticed that often the astroturf reviews use the same terminology and wording.

The thing is, if they go after astroturfing in online advertising, why not go after lies in other forms like tv and print. "all natural" is one that comes to mind. I hate that phrase, people always assume that it is equivalent to "organic" or even "good for you".