The Federal Trade Commission has charged Sitejabber, an online review platform, with violating its new fake review rules by using point-of-sale reviews to misrepresent customers' opinions of products. In one of its first enforcement actions under new rules banning companies from posting or selling fake reviews, the FTC is ordering the company to stop doing so.
According to the FTC, Sitejabber “deceptively” inflated companies' review numbers by including responses to point-of-sale questionnaires that asked customers to rate and review their shopping experience before they had actually received products or services. The company also claims that by providing its customers with tools to post this feedback on their own websites, Sitejabber allowed its customers to mislead people into believing that the ratings and reviews were based on actual experiences with what the companies were selling , based.
The FTC now prohibits Sitejabber from “misrepresenting or assisting others in misrepresenting” that such reviews are based on customer experiences with a product or service. The company is also prohibited from helping other companies misrepresent the reviews it “collects, moderates, or displays.”
The regulator's new anti-fake review rules, which came into force last month, aim to tackle AI-generated reviews across the internet, including on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. The FTC prohibits a number of deceptive practices, such as offering incentives to leave feedback or setting up a fake review website that appears independent but is actually owned by the very company that makes the products being reviewed. At least that will be the case for the next few months, until the next US president is sworn in and (probably) replaces his leadership – and we'll see what happens next.