When the internet started, review sites were an exciting element of it. If you wanted to find out a great place to take a vacation, a movie to watch, a bottle of wine to drink or a car to buy, you could now find recommendations.
But then people realized the power in reviews and they became riddled with manipulation and abuse.
From a London shed being the top rated restaurant on Tripadvisor to fake Rotten Tomatoes scores it’s become hard to trust any reviews you read.
If they’re really good reviews are they written by AI or by some review farm on the other side of the world who never tried that pizza? And if they’re bad reviews about the mechanic’s poor manners are they from a competitor who wants to smear them?
So it was pleasing to see that the FTC is going to crackdown on fake reviews but how exactly is this going to work??
When it comes to the internet there’s two things you need to keep in mind. The first is that nobody knows that you’re a dog and the second is Poe’s law.
What is meant by this is how does one determine if a review is legitimate or not. If someone posts “this was the best hotel I ever stayed at” or “this is the worst restaurant I ever ate at” how does one know if it’s fake or not? It could very well be real.
Maybe the only way to do it is for people to have some sort of online passport that connects to all of the various review sites and you register to show that you actually stayed at that hotel or ate at that restaurant. People can then see your review history and understand that you’re a real person.
Otherwise it’s hard to see how this can be enforced.
And what if a hair salon offers their actual legitimate customers a 15% discount if they write a positive review? Are these ones compromised?
This is a very nuanced issue, made more complicated by how much money hinges on reviews. It’s billions of dollars. If you can become the top carpenter or lawyer or sliced bread, people are going to flock to you. This is how things work.
The FTC deserves kudos for recognising the issue and trying to come up with a solution but it remains to be seen how effective this will be.