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February 11, 2007
Criminalizing stealth marketing
Tom points us to this story: The UK is set to institute laws by the end of 2007 that penalize stealth marketing at the individual level.
Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year.
Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole websites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from "falsely representing oneself as a consumer."
From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.
A law won't stop the white lies of a marketer trying to increase the ranking of a hotel on TripAdvisor or from adding bogus reviews to Amazon. The onus is on the aggregators to keep their ranking systems largely free of stealth influence.
But how can the typical citizen trust that an aggregated site has the systems or controls in place to help keep out the stealth marketers? An independent accreditation council that reviews and certifies the relative trustworthiness of review sites could be one answer.
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Ben
I am not so sure that an 'accreditation council' would be a good idea. The history of regulation in Europe suggests that it would be slow to respond, dull in its deliberations and likely to be open to corruption. I can just imagine the massive tome of guidelines such a body would produce for opinion posters.
I believe that citizen-driven reviews allied with rights of redress legislation for dishonest advertising are a better way to go. There are already many sites that allow the public to post reviews of products and services. They are widely used as a proxy for asking a knowledgeable friend or family member.
Graham Hill
Hi Ben. At Reevoo, we've been thinking and blogging about these issues since we started publishing reviews two years ago.
I agree with you that it's review aggregators and publishers like ourselves who need to step up and take responsibility for preventing fake reviews.
Recently we took the step of only publishing reviews that we know have come from confirmed purchasers - we blogged about it here: http://www.reevoo.com/blogs/reevooblog/2006/12/21/add-a-review-its-been-removed/
It would be very useful for us to hear your and your readers' opinions on whether we're doing enough as an aggregator to guarantee the provenance of our reviews and whether you think we should be doing more.
