By some estimates, though, as many as one in three online reviews are fake, and consumers have difficulty distinguishing real reviews from fake ones. Cornell researchers in 2011 took 400 fake positive reviews of Chicago hotels, “mixed in 400 positive TripAdvisor reviews that they believed were genuine, and asked three human judges to tell them apart. They could not.’’ And while it’s hard to spot the fakes, several websites have been under scrutiny for their reviews. A 2011 study suggested that Amazon’s reviews leaned positive, and many of Amazon’s top “unbiased” reviewers receive free products from publishers and manufacturers. A recent New York State investigation of Yelp found that 20% of the reviews on the site were fakes. Following the investigation, 19 companies producing the reviews agreed to stop posting the fakes and pay hefty fines. Just last month, Taiwan’s FTC fined Samsung $340,000 for paying for fake comments bashing its competitors in Taiwanese forums. Also, BlackBerry denied involvement in a huge number of fake reviews of its BBM app being posted in the Android store. https://truthinadvertising.org/fake-till-make/
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:47:15 +0000
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