Truth in Advertising

I don’t do a lot of follow-up posts in this space, mostly because this isn’t really a newspaper column, and even if it was, I’d be making quick notes about the developments of the day and moving on, not tracking developing stories as they evolve. But a few weeks ago on this site I was speculating about the use of false online reviews by business concerns in order to increase sales of their product (or of their clients’ products, in the case of advertising or public relations firms), and whether this would be legal. I don’t believe it’s an ethical business practice in any event; unless you disclosed to people upfront that you are being employed to make a positive review (which would rather defeat the point of “user” reviews) you are deliberately misrepresenting yourself and misleading the customer. But the question remained of whether this would actually be considered fraudulent business practice. Today I found a notice that should settle that part of the question one and for all…

A press release from the Federal Trade Commission office site details a settlement between the Commission and Reverb Communications – a public relations firm employed to promote the Guitar Hero line of video games (among other things). According to the release, the FTC has ruled that this use of paid professional “reviews” is a deceptive business practice under the Truth in Advertising statutes. In exchange for avoiding further criminal prosecution, Reverb is agreeing to take down all of the fake reviews they put up on iTunes (and similar locations) promoting their clients’ games, and discontinue the practice in the future. The agency hasn’t issued any statements about going after other firms engaging in this practice that I’ve found so far, but it’s a big Federal Internet nexus and my time is limited at the moment. If they’ve done this once they almost certainly will do it again; whether or not local law enforcement will get in on the act remains to be seen…

What is not clear – yet – is how this will affect non-profit and political organizations, such as the far-right groups referenced in my earlier post. You can’t really have a deceptive business practice if you aren’t, in fact, a business, and it’s hard to imagine what criminal charges you could possibly advance against people who are opposed to your product on philosophical or religious grounds. If there is an organized group involved you could probably sue them under civil statute for restraint of trade, but I’ve no idea if you could win such a case, or what damages you might recover if you did. The fact is, this is a relatively new area of case law, and it may be a while before it catches up with conditions in the business world – although I will caution you all once again not to take legal advice from bloggers without a license to practice law…

The thing is, no matter what laws you pass, it still won’t be possible to be certain of which reviews are legitimate, and which ones were left for some ulterior reason. So until such time as it becomes possible to identify people on the Internet, it will probably remain in everyone’s best interests to take anything you read in the comments and review sections with a grain of salt, and only accept the opinions of people you already know and trust…

Whether or not THAT will happen remains to be seen, of course…