Why it’s so hard to get rid of fake online reviews

在过去的十年中，人们越来越多地在线购物，而不是在商店中购物，大流行使这种转变加速了five years. And yet, online scams abound. Fake reviews are especially pernicious and rampant, prompting unsuspecting consumers to spend money on products and services based on phony five-star reviews.

This week, a branch of the government in the United Kingdom, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA),began an inquiryinto fake reviews on Amazon and Google to see whether they have broken the law by not taking enough action to protect consumers. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been working to crack down on brands that that pay for fake reviews since 2019. But all of these agencies are finding it harder than you might expect to police the shady world of fake reviews.

是什么推动了假评论？

在砖和砂浆商店的世界中，品牌可以通过口口相传的一种重要方式。如果客户喜欢一种产品，希望他们会推荐给其他人。在线评论旨在复制这种经验。如果客户对他们看到的产品感兴趣，那么评论应该使他们对产品的其他用户对此有何感兴趣。

在电子商务的削减世界中，品牌竭尽全力获得积极的评论，因为它们可能是购买产品而不是竞争对手的客户之间的区别。评论可能是完全伪造的，也可能是由品牌的员工撰写的，他们没有透露其隶属关系。当人们写正面评论以换取金钱或免费产品时，他们也可能会激励他们。

The latter has been proven to be effective at boosting sales. One study of700万评论发现，具有激励审查的产品的评级比未启发性的产品更高（5个中的4.74个）（5个中的4.36）。而且，0.38的差异可以将产品从第54个百分点提高到评级的第94个百分点。因此，如果您要搜索经过审查的产品，那么具有激励性评论的产品的排名可能会明显高于具有真实评论的产品。

假审稿人的地下市场

To get a glimpse into how desperate brands are for positive reviews, consider the case of Sunday Riley. In 2019, theFTC began investigating Sunday Riley当一名前员工泄露电子邮件时，该电子邮件显示公司命令员工制作伪造的丝芙兰帐户并发布对产品的发光评论。电子邮件写道：“这有助于使自己看起来很亲切 - 就像您知道痤疮有多难，并且尝试了一切，这实际上是有效的。”该公司还敦促员工在“虚拟专用网络”或VPN上撰写这些虚假评论，以便他们没有追溯到公司。

周日莱利最终通过同意不再写虚假评论来解决此案，但一些FTC专员表示，该公司应该面临货币后果。

Sunday Riley is just the tip of the iceberg. In many other cases, brands simply buy positive reviews to improve their ratings. There are WeChat and Facebook groups specifically devoted to helping sellers find fake reviewers for their products or services on Amazon, Yelp, and Google. Members of the group post positive reviews in exchange for free products or cash.

In an investigation last year,The Vergeexplored these underground groups, reporting that sellers post pictures of products and invite members to post positive reviews in exchange for a refund through Paypal. Some sellers offer an additional $2 to $15 fee on top of the refund. In other words, writing fake reviews can be a lucrative income stream, particularly for prolific reviewers;The Vergefound that some had posted upwards of 4,000 reviews.

Amazon banned incentivized reviews in 2016. It takes down suspicious reviews and has taken合法举动反对违反其政策的人。但是卖家能够避免通过在平台之外进行所有非法活动来避免被亚马逊抓住：他们在Facebook上找到并与伪造的审稿人进行交流，并向他们支付PayPal上的虚假评论。对于亚马逊来说，这些伪造的审稿人看起来很合法，因为审阅者通过其亚马逊帐户购买了产品，然后继续留下审核，正是真实审稿人的方式。确实，由于亚马逊看到他们已经购买了该产品，因此甚至给这些评论提供了“验证的购买”标签，使它们看起来更合法。

The Struggle to Police Fakes

一些技术平台赶上了虚假评论的网络，他们正在努力解决该问题。Facebook试图打击将卖方与假审稿人联系起来的团体，称他们违反了公司的政策欺诈和欺骗。Last year, it took down three large U.S. groups focused on fake reviews. But it’s relatively easy for new groups to pop up in their place.

Yelp通过在其评论页面上对其排名和“消费者警报”警告施加罚款，从而避免了公司的审查，如果证明可以使用假或激励的评论。问题在于，Yelp可能很难确定首先是审查是否是假的。就亚马逊而言，亚马逊使消费者更容易留下合法的评论，包括提供一个不需要文本的“一击评级”按钮，旨在淹没带有真实的评论，但目前尚不清楚这是否清楚策略确实有效。

Now, government agencies are stepping up their efforts by launching investigations into fake reviews. For a year now, the CMA in the United Kingdom has been actively monitoring for suspicious patterns of behaviors that offers clues that reviews might be fake, such as identifying a group of users that all seem to be reviewing the same set of random products at the same time. If the current investigation determines that Google and Amazon are not doing enough to track such trends and penalize brands that are soliciting fake reviews, the CMA may take formal action, like taking them to court.

But given the scale of the problem and the sneaky ways that sellers connect with fake reviewers, these agencies are playing a game of Whac-A-Mole. When they catch a brand, five more pop up elsewhere. For consumers, it can be very hard to parse real reviews from fake ones. So for now, it makes sense to be wary of these reviews and turn to trusted sources likeConsumer Reports, theWirecutter，以及实际使用该产品的朋友和家人。