> It also bans businesses from creating or selling reviews or testimonials. Businesses that knowingly buy fake reviews, procure them from company insiders or disseminate fake reviews will be penalized. It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.”
Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"
You are no longer allowrd to provide compensation for reviews. So companies can still send out stuff for your to possibly reviews but it can't make recieving items dependent on actually writing a review, even 'implicitly', though we'll see how enforcement shakes out.
It will be impossible to enforce. The people who don't leave good reviews simply will get dropped from the mailing list. However, it forces the whole thing to kind of move underground, which should help at least reduce the scale of the problem, and creates a deterrent against getting too aggressive with it.
And if enforced aggressively, will only provide a set up for false flag operations to get a competitor banned for fake reviews. I think we've already seen this movie in SEO....
The evidentiary standards for Google search ranking changes is VERY different than the one used for FTC enforcement actions.
I'm pretty sure getting caught for trying to frame a company for buying reviews would bring criminal charges that are more serious than the FTC enforcement action.
edit: after RTFM, page 42, coupons are considered valuable:
> For the reasons explained in this section, the Commission is finalizing the definition of
“purchase a consumer review” to mean to provide something of value, such as money, gift
certificates, products, services, discounts, coupons, contest entries, or another review, in
exchange for a consumer review.
I think that document is specifically about taxes and coupons. It is not intended to define "compensation" for every statue in California and certainly not for federally issued rules from the FTC.
Even then, that rule is about whether the coupon issuer is compensated when a coupon is used, NOT about if a customer is compensated if they are given a coupon.
Wouldn't this ban a huge swath of you tube reviews? I've watched plenty of youtube videos where some one uses a product and says something like "I had no interest in this thing, but the manufacturer offered it to me for free if I made a video of me using and gave my impressions of it"
Compensation can still be provided as long as it is not conditional on the reviewer expressing a particular sentiment. So your example could still be allowed.
> The final rule prohibits businesses from providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative.
You can non-explicitly enforce positive review coverage by simply not sending review units to people who are likely to say things bad about your products. If you send early review units to 10 people one year, and the next year only 6 of them get review units, and the 4 people who didn't get review units this year were the 4 who gave the harshest review, the message is now out that you need to say good things if you want to continue getting early access to devices for reviews.
SnazzyLabs is a good example - he should be well within the criteria for Apple to be sending him iPhones and Macs early, but I can only assume Apple thinks he's too critical when he finds an issue he doesn't like. Thus he has to buy his review units on street release date along with everyone else. How many people are giving less critical reviews because of that?
nVidia tried to pull this stunt with the YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed. They weren't singing the praises of RTX and DLSS loud enough for nVidia and were threatened with having review samples withheld until they changed their tune.
So if I style myself as a negative only reviewer, they have to give me a review unit? Like I'm that judge in the olympics that never gives anyone a perfect score. The best your product will get from me is a 2/10.
OK, then this has been the de-facto standard amongst many industries for a long time. Plenty of reviewers say stuff like "it really is weird! I made one video about how I didn't like a product. After that I was never invited to attend a launch for a product, get early access, etc. I guess those two could not be correlated at all!"
Based on the text you have shared it'd be perfectly fine if you were paid to write a "neutral" review.
Still seems like it leaves in a giant loophole for all of those overly-cheery reviews that start with, "This item was provided to me by the manufacturer in exchange for a fair and honest review!"