

Fake Reviewers Snared in NY Attorney General Yogurt Sting - DiabloD3
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/09/23/us/23reuters-fake-reviewers.html?hp&_r=0

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Zikes
Alright, so New York's relevant offices get a lot of complaints of false
advertising in various online forums in the form of fake reviews. Obviously
this is bad for legitimate businesses in the area, because their reputation
could be negatively affected to a fairly significant degree, especially if the
practice is allowed to continue.

So what should they do about it? It's a matter of fraud, it just happens to
take place online, and probably in more places than just yelp.com. Since it's
fraud, they have an obligation to investigate and prosecute it, and a sting
operation like this is probably one of the most effective means of doing so.

This is New York saying they care about their businesses, and that they're
willing to take action to protect them. I mean, would you want to open a
yogurt shop in New York if you knew it'd have to shut down in less than a year
because of a bunch of false negative reviews online? What would be the
potential economic impact of that hostile sort of environment?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are
going to be bogus.

But suppose you open a legitimate yogurt shop in Brooklyn, and the competing
yogurt shop down the street hires one of those shady Bangladeshi outfits to
post a bunch of positive reviews of your business, then rats you out to the
AG. The AG is going to come down on you pretty hard, and you're fined, and
you're out of business. Mission accomplished.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. This is not an enforceable kind
of law.

New York spends a lot of time and money on rather esoteric cases like this
when there's plenty of good old fashioned street crimes they could be putting
their resources into instead: muggings, gang-related activities, car theft,
things that everyone living and working in NYC has to deal with every day of
the year.

~~~
aleyan
I have been living in NYC for the past 5 years. These are the things I dealt
with:

    
    
      [ ] muggings
      [ ] gang-related activities
      [ ] car theft
      [X] false restaurant reviews

~~~
victorf
NYC actually has an epidemic of persons unlawfully looking through the pockets
of black men and I think that should be attended to before restaurant reviews.

~~~
code_duck
Do you mean law enforcement or muggers?

~~~
testing12341234
I believe the comment refers to NYC's Stop and Frisk program[0] which has been
ruled unconstitutional by a US district judge, who found that the program
unfairly targets African Americans and Latinos.

[0] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-
frisk_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-
frisk_program)

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205guy
Wow, the comments here are a story in-and-of themselves. I have to wonder if
the people questioning state involvement are not astro-turfing here as well
(in defense of the companies that got snared).

To make a bad pun, it's not free speech if you have to be paid for it. The
state will go after those who pay or receive money for what they say.

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lawnchair_larry
Very happy to see this. These companies are shameless, and there needs to be a
deterrent against businesses trying to deceive consumers doing research. This
has nothing to do with free speech.

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aurelius83
I find it very worrisome that the government views online anonymous postings
on a private website as advertisement to be enforced by public agencies.

But, I guess it's no different than the government regulating anonymous online
speech about stocks.

~~~
Zikes
Speech is free right up to where it interferes with others' freedoms and
liberties, which is why we have slander/libel laws, etc.

The medium doesn't exempt people from those laws.

~~~
thaumasiotes
But false positive reviews are extremely unlikely to fall afoul of libel
laws...

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nostromo
It makes much more sense for Yelp to go after spammers, in the same way Google
does. Not the NY Attorney General.

~~~
chimeracoder
These aren't (just) spammers, though - they are people committing fraud
against New York State businesses[0]. They just happen to be committing fraud
on an online platform.

[0] Or rather, New York State businesses themselves committing fraud (if they
are the ones writing fake positive reviews about themselves)

(Edited to reflect argumentum's reply),

~~~
argumentum
Can you explain how the reviewers are committing fraud? If anything, it's the
businesses falsely advertising.

~~~
mynewwork
If McDonalds runs an advertisement claiming Burger King serves horse meat,
that's illegal.

If McDonalds pays a company to post a review posing as a customer that says
Burger King served them horse meat, how is that any different?

~~~
chris_mahan
I'm French, I've had (and loved) horse meat. I guarantee Burger King is not
serving horse meat.

Edit to reflect responder: I do get the point.

~~~
chris_wot
You miss the point?

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nlh
Here's a question, based on an experience. Two scenarios:

A) A company posts fake reviews about itself, through whatever means.
Consumers get a false representation of the business. The company and its
associates are the bad guys, Yelp is the good guy.

B) Yelp's filters hide most positive reviews about a company, leaving only
negative reviews. All reviews are legitimate. Consumers get an equally false
impression of the business. Yelp is the bad guy.

Why is A) illegal and deserving of state interference, but B) is totally legal
and continues today?

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dnautics
isn't this yelp's job to police? Why is taxpayer money going into propping up
yelp's reputation?

~~~
tzs
> Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?

It isn't. It's going into catching people violating various criminal laws
against fraud. That stopping such people happens to help Yelp is a side-
effect.

~~~
argumentum
I'm not sure how the reviewers themselves violated laws against fraud. If
anything, the businesses that paid for the reviews violated said laws.

~~~
criley2
Because fraud means to be deceptive towards someone else for personal gain.

I guess you could argue like a racketeering effect-- who is guilty of murder,
the man who pulls the trigger or the mafia boss who orders the hit? (Spoiler:
both).

In fact, I'd love to see a State Attorney General use RICO to target not just
a group of reviewers who are defrauding businesses, but the entire supply
chain by which they get their targets and get paid for their illegal behavior.

~~~
dnautics
fraud has a very specific, nine-point definition that may be more specific
than what you believe it to be, for good reason too, because you don't want
people going around crying "fraud, fraud, fraud" at the bat of an eyelash.

And to use RICO to go after them is really goddamn scary. RICO act
specifically incurred to run-arounds on due process that were designed to go
after organized crime. the expansion of that to terrorists essentially
constituted the more worrisome aspects of the PATRIOT act.

------
downandout
This operation seems like a complete waste of taxpayer money. While paid
reviews are a violation of Yelp's TOS, since most businesses didn't add
themselves to Yelp (they were added by reviewers or Yelp itself), they have
not agreed to and are not subject to those TOS. Some incredibly blatant
actions may qualify as fraud, but the bar for avoiding such accusations is
very low. Businesses can simply ask paid reviewers not to post inauthentic
reviews, and they have met their burden.

~~~
criley2
Lying about a business in a public forum with the sole motivation of harming
the business... that's fraud.

"fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another
individual;" Not a legal definition, but a good enough definition for now.

I think it's a decent use of taxpayer money to help combat the defrauding of
businesses in the area.

If they were printing these fake derogatory reviews in local newspapers or on
local TV, would your opinion of the fraud change?

~~~
r00fus
The NYT article shouldn't say "fake" but "fraudulent", as that's the crux of
the issue.

I can put up a fake review, but if it's with the intent to harm, it's
fraudulent.

Now what do we do about fake reviews that are puff pieces intended to goose
ratings?

~~~
chris_mahan
I agree. There's a difference between review one: "I tried their yogurt, and
it tastes like New Jersey Shore Sand", and review two: "Go to my_shOes.cOm and
get great sneakers for chEap."

One is obviously lousy to the business. The other, just SEO.

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o0-0o
Does anyone have a list of the names of the companies?

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taopao
Oh noes, think of the growth hackings!

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gcb0
great. What's next? Tax money used to secure all of slashdot first posts to
prevent trolls from getting it?

~~~
conover
So you're saying that government shouldn't attempt to identify and prosecute
those who it believes "breached laws against false advertising and deceptive
business practices."

~~~
trysomething
Yeah, in this case it should be Yelp's job to filter out fake reviews. Yelp
should foot the bill for operations like this or for engineers to write better
algorithms.

~~~
avree
So, if I run a car rental company, and people start stealing cars, is it my
job to recover the cars or filter out the criminals?

After all, I could write algorithms that used more and more information to
determine criminality.

~~~
ceejayoz
> So, if I run a car rental company, and people start stealing cars, is it my
> job to recover the cars or filter out the criminals?

I'm pretty sure they do credit checks and run my license.

~~~
aliakbarkhan
How do you propose to credit check car thieves? Ultra effective car alarms
that only deactivate for people with good credit?

