The FTC orders Sitejabber to cease faking product critiques

The Federal Commerce Fee has charged Sitejabber, an internet assessment platform, with violating its new faux critiques guidelines through the use of point-of-sale critiques to misrepresent what clients take into consideration merchandise. In considered one of its first enforcement actions underneath new guidelines banning corporations from making or promoting faux critiques, the FTC is ordering the corporate to cease.

The FTC says Sitejabber “deceptively” punched up companies’ assessment counts by incorporating responses to point-of-sale questionnaires asking clients to price and assessment 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 individuals to suppose 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 corporations misrepresent the critiques that “it collects, moderates, or shows.”

The regulator’s new anti-fake assessment guidelines, which went into impact final month, purpose to handle AI-generated critiques on-line, together with on Amazon and different e-commerce websites. The FTC prohibits a swath of misleading practices, reminiscent of providing incentives to depart suggestions or making a faux assessment web site that appears impartial however is definitely owned by the very firm that makes the merchandise being reviewed. Or not less than, it is going to for the subsequent couple of months, after which the subsequent US President will likely be sworn in and (in all probability) change its management — and we’ll see what occurs subsequent.