The FTC orders Sitejabber to cease faking product critiques

The Federal Commerce Fee has charged Sitejabber, an internet evaluate platform, with violating its new pretend critiques guidelines by utilizing point-of-sale critiques to misrepresent what prospects take into consideration merchandise. In certainly one of its first enforcement actions underneath new guidelines banning firms from making or promoting pretend critiques, 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 buying 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 folks to assume the rankings and critiques have been based mostly on precise expertise with what the businesses have been promoting.

The FTC now forbids Sitejabber from “misrepresenting, or helping anybody else in misrepresenting” that such critiques are based mostly on buyer expertise with a services or products. The corporate can be barred from serving to different firms misrepresent the critiques 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 critiques on-line, together with on Amazon and different e-commerce websites. The FTC prohibits a swath of misleading practices, resembling providing incentives to go away suggestions or making a pretend evaluate web site that appears unbiased however is definitely owned by the very firm that makes the merchandise being reviewed. Or at the very least, it would for the following couple of months, after which the following US President will likely be sworn in and (most likely) change its management — and we’ll see what occurs subsequent.