FTC Rules on Fake Reviews Aren’t Enough: Hold Sites Accountable

“Shocked by the aftermath of a crippling injury that left me mentally and physically paralyzed, I found solace in the caring confines of this remarkable facility… They recognized the complex layers of my trauma and took a personal approach as well as a professional one.”

If I needed mental health care, this would be the place, right? Wrong. This quote is from one of dozens of fake Yelp and Google reviews for a chain of psychiatric clinics in four states.

Online reviews were one of the great innovations of the technological revolution. What consumer doesn’t appreciate having a multitude of real experiences just a click away? Unfortunately, technology’s one-time blessing has turned into a flop. Fake reviews are now seeping into review sites, misleading millions of consumers and damaging thousands of honest businesses.

The Federal Trade Commission published its long-awaited rule in August to crack down on fake online reviews. It’s a positive step, but while the rule goes after the culprits who buy and sell fake reviews, it gives a free pass to those most responsible for the entire system and who do far too little to clean up the fraud: the third-party review platforms themselves.

In six years of research, I’ve found fake online business reviews in professions ranging from doctors, dentists and lawyers to dog walkers, piano teachers and a children’s charity. The pressure to maintain high online ratings is partly to blame, but poor oversight by review platforms and their failure to punish cheaters means the market is skewed in favour of the unscrupulous.

Much of the fraud is organized on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook, where countless groups exist to facilitate the buying, selling and trading of fake online reviews. The lawsuit that Amazon filed in 2022 against the administrators of 10,000 of these Facebook groups illustrates the scale of the problem. According to Amazon, one group alone had more than 43,000 members.

An entire industry of fake reviews is flourishing in places beyond the FTC’s reach, including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. In a public Facebook group in Bangladesh, an entrepreneur brazenly advertised jobs for his fellow citizens: posting fake reviews on Google and Trustpilot for American businesses, including medical practices. The lawyer set up a virtual bulletin board of businesses to review, provided links to the appropriate Google or Trustpilot pages, provided the text of the reviews to be posted and explained the payment procedures. Dozens of Bangladeshis responded.

Instagram review sellers regularly recruit Yelp Elites, Yelp’s most trusted and prestigious reviewers, and pay them $20 to $50 to post pre-written Yelp reviews of businesses.

Fake review trading is another shady activity that takes place in Facebook groups. I’ve seen a psychologist from Virginia swap Yelp reviews with an educational store in Missouri. A Michigan eye surgeon trade with a martial arts studio in Seattle. A Los Angeles law firm trade with a local psychic.

While review platforms tout their efforts to combat this fraud, their negligence and lack of transparency exacerbate the problem. Consider:

• Review platforms spend too little resources on detecting fake reviews. Without automation, I can find thousands of fake reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook on any given day. Are we to believe that Google can’t see that the same people are reviewing a chiropractor in Missouri, an orthodontist in Wisconsin, a podiatrist in New York, and an endodontist in Arizona? Are we to believe that Yelp can’t find the thousands of plagiarized Tripadvisor reviews on its site? Or that Facebook doesn’t find it odd that a pediatrician received 293 reviews in a single day, many of them commenting on the dentist’s excellent “items,” “delivery,” and “packaging”?
• Too few cheaters face consequences. I could list a long list of businesses that have had dozens or even hundreds of fake reviews removed by Google or Yelp, but face no consequences because consumers are unaware. Review sites should share everything they know about a business’s review history with consumers.
• The assessment patterns of profiles are opaque. Google allows reviewers to make their profiles private, a tactic exploited by fakers who want to hide their suspicious review patterns. Many other review sites are even less transparent. Consumers can’t see anything about people’s review histories on most medical review sites or even the Better Business Bureau.
• Rating platforms are still largely unaccountable to the public. Last fall, a Florida contractor was harassed by fake negative Google and Facebook reviews, but both tech giants ignored the company’s pleas for help. It was only after a local media story that Google responded and removed the reviews. Facebook never responded, and the fake reviews are still active today. This is not an isolated case.

The FTC’s new rule is akin to cracking down on street dealers and junkies while leaving drug cartels alone. The tech companies’ negligence and indifference rewards deception, undermines corporate ethics, and distorts the marketplace.

If Section 230 prevents the FTC from holding third-party review platforms accountable for the mess of fake reviews they have created, then it’s time for Congress to act.

Kathryn Dean is the creator of Fake watch review and his eponymous YouTube channel.