
Company fined $300,000 for posting fake reviews online - vaksel
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/technology/internet/15lift.html
======
ckinnan
Three cheers for the NY Attorney General. Fake commercial posts and non-
disclosed pay-to-posts are clearly deceptive false advertising.

~~~
Elessar
Indeed. It's a good day for common sense. Usually when laws are applied to the
internet, everything flies out the windows. "Oh it's on a computer? Well
that's different!"

It's nice to see false advertising on a public site treated the same way false
advertising in a magazine would.

~~~
Alex3917
If astroturfing is false advertising, does this case mean that any review of a
product is also advertising? If I post a positive review of, say, cigarettes
and I don't comply with various regulations does that now open me up to having
my house seized and being thrown in jail?

~~~
electromagnetic
A company giving positive reviews as non-existent customers on consumer
products for money is fraud. I worked as a reviewer and I worked hard to be
honest and genuine, this kind of BS that goes on on amazon.com and places is
insulting to all reviewers because generally you work very hard and don't get
nearly enough pay.

Oh BTW your house is at risk with virtually any company you start until you
get limited liability, so I don't really get what point you're trying to make.
Almost anyone can start an ULC for the very reason that if you fail and get
hugely in debt (like a large amount of companies do) then the bank still gets
its money. You either need to have the money to cover your expenses up front,
or you risk losing your home.

My father has run a business all his life, but all the important stuff was
always in my mothers name and never joint so if he ever had a problem the
house and cars weren't going to disappear without a major fight.

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cruise02
> The company will pay $300,000 in penalties and costs to the state. _It has
> also agreed to stop publishing anonymous reviews on Web sites in the voices
> of satisfied customers and to identify any content created by employees, the
> statement said._

Emphasis mine. I would think that agreeing to stop the behavior that landed
them in court would be implied. It would be mildly interesting to me to find
out if this kind of clause is added because it _needs_ to be added.

~~~
ars
They always say that. Don't know why, but every time there is a settlement a
clause like this is part of it. Even for things way more obviously bad than
this.

~~~
SwellJoe
I would assume the penalties could then be made even more serious, because if
they do it again, they're explicitly violating the settlement agreement. So,
then they'd be on the hook for violating the contract, as well as a similar
deceptive advertising charge.

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byrneseyeview
It's great to see people getting nailed for biased posts -- but I suspect that
people posting misinformation for _emotionally_ satisfying reasons actually
cause more harm.

If the AG is serious about prosecuting harmful behavior, rather than evil
capitalists, he ought to go after anyone who would rather forward an email
than fact-check, or who argues for a viewpoint because of feel-good emotions
("All decent, NPR-listening, upper-middle-class white folks like me _know_
this is right") rather than facts.

~~~
ckinnan
This is about stopping a form of business-funded deceptive advertising. This
is not about regulating private behavior or private speech. You can say (or
forward) whatever you want as an individual. The issue here is dishonest
commercial speech...

~~~
byrneseyeview
I really, really hope you don't actually believe that. You seem to be arguing
that a claim made for reasons you don't like is morally inferior to a more
harmful claim made for reasons you do like.

Is it really worse for one commercially-minded person to say "Try Acme Widget;
I hear they give great service!" than for a well-meaning person to say "No
decent person can afford to give these potential Satanic Ritual Abusers
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers>) the benefit of the
doubt."?

It's fine to say that someone should not make harmful claims due to commercial
motivations. But I don't see why the motivation is the concern, not the harm
of the claim. Would you rather live in a world in which harmful claims aren't
made, or a world in which harmful claims are made all the time, but at least
the way people are compensated for them isn't monetary.

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tjr
Isn't this more or less what the parrot book guy was doing?

~~~
vaksel
good point, it seems like this would take out all of those landing page type
sites

~~~
dkokelley
Assuming that the reviews are in fact fake. How would you determine this?

~~~
vaksel
well for one, noone writes like they do in those reviews. You can taste the
fakeness

~~~
Sujan
Someone does...

------
migpwr
This is funny. There's going to be a huge applause for this post but whenever
there's an article about an individual being prosecuted for piracy... it's the
evil RIAA.

Edit: I'm not trying to turn this into a a piracy argument but I do think
there's a double standard there.

~~~
jonknee
The part that incites anger isn't prosecuting someone for behavior on the
internet, it's the actual behavior. Astro-turfing reviews hurts consumers and
thus this prosecution is applauded by consumers. Consumers downloading music
hurts the producers and thus is applauded by the producers (well, some of
them).

It's really not hard to understand why seeing the "little" guy be attacked
incites more popular anger than the reverse.

~~~
migpwr
I think it's pretty obvious why the little guy story is more popular but i
think both stories are pretty much the same.

Numbers aside, putting a significant fine on a company that's breaking the law
is no different than a fine on an individual. It's meant to make an example
out of them to discourage similar behavior in the future... no?

~~~
req2
So by this standard, HN should applaud prosecutions and searches under the new
blasphemy laws in Ireland, because breaking the law is no different, no matter
the law?

~~~
migpwr
These headlines will typically turn into a cheercamp and I was just pointing
that out. I probably worded it poorly but let's not applaud or boo at all.

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Tichy
Just curious, what law where they breaking?

