this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Takes effect in October, finally some good news

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[–] Boozilla 124 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Lina Khan is a champion of the people. She's one of a zillion reasons voting matters.

[–] negativenull 49 points 2 months ago

She's an absolute rock star

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Walz/Khan 2032

[–] [email protected] 102 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I’m very interested how this will affect Amazon, and how they will be able to enforce it

[–] mipadaitu 73 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Maybe they shouldn't have 6,000 versions of the same thing under different fake brands sold by fake companies.

Clean that up and the rest becomes a hell of a lot easier.

[–] tyrant 41 points 2 months ago

Not to mention the sellers that swap the product but keep the reviews

[–] Brokkr 8 points 2 months ago

I think a lot of that stuff is people buying items in bulk off alibaba, rebranding it, and listing. Most of it is crap, but that's how stuff like it can be so cheaply produced, it's one or two factories producing at scale.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

All the DCRYTJT HDMI cables for a start. Got a couple of bad reviews? Just run your hand over the keyboard at random, there's your new brand name. They're now XDCRHJT HDMI cables.

Generic products should just be listed together.

[–] mipadaitu 5 points 2 months ago

You'd probably enjoy this Ryan George sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30

[–] comador 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

AMZ: Who, us? All our reviews are REAL!

Target and Walmart: Yeah, what they said!

[–] Wogi 8 points 2 months ago

Lowe's is horrible about this too. Most of the big box stores are but Lowe's seems to be the most egregious about it

[–] bustAsh 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I updated my Firefox browser. Now, when viewing a product on Amazon, Firefox rates the reviews A-F based on whether or not they are reliable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Is that part of the browser itself or some extension?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Fuck Amazon. Never buy their basics bullshit, they steal shit and rebrand it. It's as unethical as purchasing shit gets.

Edit: Here's a video! https://youtu.be/HbxWGjQ2szQ

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The ban also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.

I wonder if "followers" includes users and how that will impact Twitter, Reddit, Facebooky, Instagram, TikTok, etc who use stats like active users to drive ad sales.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

But I thought Elon got rid of all the bots... does that mean my sweetheart's link isn't actually in their bio?

I am devastated.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

I'm curious about that too, I assumed the main target was online storefronts but it seems more expansive than that. Was surprised to learn about Amazon suing admins of FB groups.

[–] Crismus 3 points 2 months ago

Let's hope this means the constant calls I get on What's App to work as a fake promoter bumping review scores will stop.

I was starting to be tempted because I hate poverty.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (4 children)

There’s no way they will be able to enforce this.

[–] FlowVoid 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Here's one way to enforce it: the FTC could set up fronts that sell fake reviews. If anyone tries to buy fake reviews, the FTC busts them.

After doing this enough, companies will be suspicious of anyone selling fake reviews. Maybe suspicious enough to not risk buying them. Kind of like how it's common knowledge that every supposed killer-for-hire is actually an FBI agent waiting to arrest you.

Eventually, nobody want to buy fake reviews. And when nobody wants to pay for them, they will disappear.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

That….. could work.

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[–] mke 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Perhaps the value is in having something explicitly written in a book, so that we can actually throw it at them.

They won't catch all cases, but maybe the fear of slipping and becoming the unlucky company that gets caught and punished will have a positive effect on the industry.

I don't have a backgrounder in law, this is simply optimistic speculation in response to pessimistic speculation.

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[–] julysfire 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The enforcement of this is going to be pretty tough. And the fake reviews by bots will get argued to high hell and back in court. "They aren't bots, they are real people in click farms".

Love the direction but I am not holding my breath until we see some actionable change from this.

[–] DreamlandLividity 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's not how this works. The rule can't stop you as a private person. You can still post bot reviews.

It will apply to businesses, which don't have the right to remain silent or against searches. If they suspect a business is breaking the rules, they can subpoena the employees, computers and bank records to check if they are breaking the rule. And if they think the employees would risk jail time for perjury or destruction of evidence to protect their employer, they can just raid the offices and seize the computers.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Amazon has some major cleaning up to do

[–] FlowVoid 7 points 2 months ago

The new rule bans writing, buying or selling fake reviews.

It does not require Amazon or Apple to identify or delete fake reviews.

[–] Fedizen 23 points 2 months ago

I won't believe this is serious until somebody kicks down a door

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

I purchased an FTC and was very pleased with my product. It can be loud at times and make bold claims, but in the end does nothing.

[–] AtomicTacoSauce 19 points 2 months ago (16 children)

How can this possibly be enforced?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not sure why you're being down voted. It's a legit question even if you support the law. Enforcement seems very difficult and other laws and courts make even easier enforcement difficult.

I still think it's a very positive direction from the FTC.

[–] AtomicTacoSauce 9 points 2 months ago

Not sure why you're being down voted

I guess Reddit habits never die, eh?

But, I’d love to see this come to fruition. I just don’t see how enforcement could keep up with the sheer numbers of fake reviews.

[–] FlowVoid 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The rule targets people who write or sell fake reviews. So the FTC could pretend to be a manufacturer soliciting fake reviews, and then go after anyone who offers to sell them.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Might just give way to an arms race for realistic fake reviews, but at least this gives teeth to investigators. If they can prove that a company did it, then they have a rule to cite that it’s an offense, instead of the fuck-all we have now.

[–] Pacattack57 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The same way as other laws. A small fine that gets rolled into the cost of doing business.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Now there's an interesting one. If this is actually enforced properly then it could really have a big impact on some sites that are notorious for bot spamming to make themselves look impressive.

[–] Mog_fanatic 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Very true but man this is gonna be tough to actually enforce. Not only just bots but how the heck are paid reviews gonna be found and banned? Those are legit reviews by actual people, just saying bull crap because they were paid or received a free product or something

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[–] SomeGuy69 17 points 2 months ago

This will be fun to Amazon, either 95% of all reviews will suddenly disappear or they're no longer legal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So, they’re gonna start policing Apple’s App Store for the many obviously fake reviews and make Apple do something about it, right? Please be yes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

So long as they do the same for androids store and everyone else- I agree.

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[–] thesohoriots 14 points 2 months ago

Hopefully they address those companies that force frontload all the 5-star, then 4-star, etc. with no way to sort except by going through hundreds of pages.

[–] foggy 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Next ban fake followers lmao

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

They mention followers in the article!

[–] ripcord 3 points 2 months ago

Read the article

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