Yelp has started publicly naming and shaming businesses that pay for reviews. The review site’s new index documents businesses offering everything from a crisp $100 bill for leaving the best review to a $400 Home Depot gift card for a five-star review. It also lists every business whose reviews have ever been suspected of suspicious activity, like spamming the site with multiple reviews from a single IP address.
Engadget dubbed Yelp’s new index a “wall of shame,” suggesting that the information may be used by federal agencies who have spent the past few years cracking down on paid fake reviews. This year, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a ban on “the use of deceptive reviews and testimonials,” with penalties up to $50,000 for businesses “caught buying, selling or manipulating online reviews,” Engadget reported.
Yelp wants to see the Federal Trade Commission enact the ban, Yelp’s head of user operations, Noorie Malik, told Engadget. The FTC noted that Yelp reported 950 suspicious posts, users, or groups facilitating fake reviews in 2021 alone.
Of course, the fake review problem goes beyond Yelp. The FTC reported that earlier this year, academic researchers infiltrated “incentivized review services geared toward Amazon” that solicited five-star reviews for more than 240,000 products. On Facebook, 250 groups were discovered brokering paid reviews of Amazon products—some with more than 500,000 members. The FTC noted that while Amazon claims to delist products soliciting incentivized reviews, only 25 of 1,600 products tracked by researchers were removed within a six-week period.
Amazon declined to comment. Yelp did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.
Malik told Engadget that Yelp also hopes that users will visit the index to make “educated decisions” when choosing which businesses to support. Malik noted that people may not care about juice bars offering 15 percent off drinks for a five-star review, but they might be more hesitant to hire a construction company to do home repairs if they know they paid for all those five-star reviews that lure trusting customers to check out the business.
Though the list has only just begun indexing Yelp’s bad actors, Yelp plans to keep growing the index into a robust resource.
“We’d love to get to a place where this new index develops into a regular resource for others, whether it’s FTC, consumers, regulators, or other sites,” Malik told Engadget.
Amazon assists in arrest of fake review brokers
The consequences of paying for fake reviews could go beyond getting listed on Yelp’s “wall of shame,” though. Just last week, Amazon announced that two China-based review brokers were sentenced to 2.5 years after facilitating fake reviews in Amazon’s store between March 2021 and March 2022. It was only the second time that Amazon had ever helped law enforcement arrest review brokers, the company said.
“Two individual fake review brokers were found guilty of illegal business operations intended to deceive Amazon customers and harm Amazon selling partners through the facilitation of fake reviews,” Amazon’s blog said. “These verdicts are the result of local law enforcement’s investigation and a criminal referral supported by Amazon.”
Unlike many of the businesses that Yelp has indexed—which seem to mostly commission positive reviews—the review brokers working on Amazon would accept payment both to “boost a bad actor’s product ranking” or to leave “fake negative reviews to lower the ranking of a competitor’s product.”
Malik told Engadget that Yelp hopes that other platforms will start holding businesses that pay for reviews accountable. Engadget noted that Yelp had “previously worked with the FTC to notify them when it discovers fake reviews and the sometimes complex operations behind them.” Similarly, Amazon vowed to continue working with law enforcement to crack down on paid fake reviews.
“Amazon is pleased to see that these fraudsters are being held accountable for their actions,” David Montague, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Risk, said in the blog. “The verdicts are a testament to the partnership of local officials in bringing down those who attempt to deceive our customers and harm our selling partners. We look forward to continuing to partner with law enforcement toward the mutual goal of bringing fake review brokers to justice.”
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1970279