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posted by hubie on Thursday January 30, @06:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the in-my-experience-hubie-is-the-best-editor-there-is-on-the-Internet dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant’s reviews platform. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on Friday that Google has agreed to improve its processes for detecting and removing fake reviews, and will take action against the businesses and reviewers that post them.

This includes deactivating the ability to add new reviews for businesses found to be using fake reviews, and deleting all existing reviews for at least six months if they repeatedly engage in suspicious review activity. Google will also place prominent “warning alerts” on the Google profiles of businesses using fake reviews to help consumers be more aware of potentially misleading feedback. Individuals who repeatedly post fake or misleading reviews on UK business pages will be banned and have their review history deleted, even if they’re located in another country.

Google is required to report to the CMA over the next three years to ensure it’s complying with the agreement.

“The changes we’ve secured from Google ensure robust processes are in place, so people can have confidence in reviews and make the best possible choices,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “This is a matter of fairness – for both business and consumers – and we encourage the entire sector to take note.”

Google made similar changes to reviews in Maps last year, saying that contributions “should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business.” However, those changes apply globally while Google’s commitment to improving reviews across all its properties appears to just apply to the UK for now.

The changes to reviews follow a CMA [*] investigation launched against Google and Amazon in 2021 over concerns the companies had violated consumer protection laws by not doing enough to tackle fake reviews on their platforms. The CMA says its probe into Amazon is still ongoing and that an update will be announced “in due course.”

[CMA: Competition and Markets Authority]


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  • (Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Thursday January 30, @07:58PM (11 children)

    by Frosty Piss (4971) on Thursday January 30, @07:58PM (#1391020)

    Online reviews, either by "customers" or (most likely paid) web sites / influencers / experts are useless, and have been for years.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 30, @08:27PM (8 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday January 30, @08:27PM (#1391022)

      It's just impossible to separate the signal from the noise.

      Positive reviews can come from company owners, family, friends, paid reviewers.

      Negative reviews can come from competing companies, a single customer that imagined they had a bad experience and goes ballistic with multiple sock-puppets, etc.

      I have been feeling, for decades now, that cryptographically secure identities are the basis of establishing real value in the data on the internet. Even when the identities don't tie to real-life people, the identity itself can build reputation for fair dealing, etc. Reviews from identities with no value basis (throwaway accounts, likely bot accounts, etc.) can and should be ignored. This identity basis should underpin EVERYTHING on the web that is attempting to represent itself as true information.

      Related project from 2017 - sadly she seems to have burned out and is working Patreon for tips these days: https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/category/code-will-rule/ [wordpress.com] If you've got the patience for a one hour thinly attended conference talk with a few decent Q&As, this one is better than most: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lneSYhSJN3M&t=1s [youtube.com]

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday January 30, @09:27PM (3 children)

        by pTamok (3042) on Thursday January 30, @09:27PM (#1391028)

        I have been feeling, for decades now, that cryptographically secure identities are the basis of establishing real value in the data on the internet. Even when the identities don't tie to real-life people, the identity itself can build reputation for fair dealing, etc.

        I agree with you, but there needs to be a mechanism that can prevent identities with value being either stolen and used for gain (some kind of identity-revocation-list, and yes, I know that isn't scalable and has other problems) or bought and traded as commodities, which means the richest have the most 'credibility'.

        Such identities also need to be guaranteed anonymous. Otherwise, you can be blacklisted 'in real life' for speaking the truth.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31, @02:26AM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31, @02:26AM (#1391051)

          >a mechanism that can prevent identities with value being either stolen and used

          I would sum up that mechanism as: key management.

          >bought and traded as commodities, which means the richest have the most 'credibility'.

          A close relative of gold farming for games... If the identity starts promoting verifiable falsehoods it would plummet in value like a tenured professor with Alzheimer's, not instantly, but it would be expensive to buy reputations just to trash them.

          The richest can always buy credibility, free T shirts and a nice meal seems to be the going rate to get a homeless person to support your cause in a public hearing. Pay a little more and people might not see through the ruse.

          >Anonymous

          This depends on the user's operational security practice and consistency. If I go telling you that I live in a small HOA with a view of Devil's Tower and I drive a purple MGB, that identity's anonymity is obviously compromised. When people write thousands of little tweets over years, they slowly erode their anonymity even if they try to be careful.

          The best anonymity comes with a single use throw away identity, but that also has minimal credibility.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday January 31, @08:55AM (1 child)

            by pTamok (3042) on Friday January 31, @08:55AM (#1391077)

            Key management is a hard problem. There are lots of snake-oil salesmen that claim to have an easy solution. They lie.

            Opsec for the purposes of preserving anonymity doesn't work these days. There is too much surveillance. As you say, single-use identities work, but then can't have a reputation, unless you falsify the reputation (which we are trying to guard against). Another hard problem.

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31, @10:49PM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31, @10:49PM (#1391140)

              >Key management is a hard problem.

              It absolutely is. That's why you've got bozos suing to try to excavate landfills...

              Opsec is another hard problem. You have to abandon some social norms, like Snowden in the movie putting a blanket over his head and laptop while he types his password.

              People don't care enough to protect their anonymity effectively, even if they knew how they wouldn't want to act that weird.

              And, then, people interacting on social media with enough opsec to truly protect their anonymity wouldn't be very effective thought leaders, because others would mostly find them cold, distant, and weird.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Friday January 31, @01:02AM (3 children)

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31, @01:02AM (#1391033)
        I dunno. I think as long as regulation about things like false advertising are properly enforced the need to verify reviews is nerfed. But... I am saying that while both T-Mobile and Apple are on my current shitlist for deceptive practices which undermines my point. Sigh. I am not an optimistic consumer.
        --
        🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31, @02:27AM (2 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31, @02:27AM (#1391052)

          I think that style of regulation is nearly impossible to enforce.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by Tork on Friday January 31, @02:38AM (1 child)

            by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31, @02:38AM (#1391054)
            Yeah. I do have fantasies of something like the BBB but with authority. Or if Small Claims were done in online form. "Yeah, tell the judge how my having you hold a package at your facility AFTER it was clear it wouldn't be delivered on time exempts me from your on-time guarantee." *SEND*

            And I want a fully fueled Starfleet Runabout.
            --
            🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 31, @02:54AM

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 31, @02:54AM (#1391055)

              Yeah, the runabout is more likely to happen first, I think.

              Things like the BBB work in towns up to maybe 500k population, with businesses in operation for five or more years.

              Most companies I look up on Amazon are China based with less than a year in business.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday January 30, @09:24PM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday January 30, @09:24PM (#1391027)

      I work on a system that collects and processes some of this stuff as my day job. And while I can't go into details, I can say with some confidence:
      - It's not 100% bunk. There are a lot of businesses with a lot of bad reviews that are in fact absolutely awful, for instance.
      - But also it's definitely not 100% not bunk. There are lots of methods of ways of getting what you want into the reviews listings, either to rate yourself as good or your competitor as bad, and while some stuff can be detected it's generally easy to pull off and not get caught.

      So not completely useless, but definitely closer to "some guy at the pub said so" level of reliability.

      --
      "Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
      • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday January 31, @09:05AM

        by pTamok (3042) on Friday January 31, @09:05AM (#1391078)

        The technique I use is to look for detailed bad reviews, where people go into why something is bad, and make my own evaluation of the reasons, and the same for good reviews - where people say why a product or service is good, in their experience.

        5-stars thumbs up recommended - says nothing to me.
        5-stars: fast efficient service, happily turned down the volume of the muzak on request (my hearing doesn't cope well with high levels of background noise), happy to give me some extra chopped chilis, swiftly replaced the wrongly delivered beer with the correct one with no argument - tells me why someone was happy.

  • (Score: 1, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Saturday February 01, @11:43AM

    by DadaDoofy (23827) on Saturday February 01, @11:43AM (#1391163)

    Why is this on Google? Businesses that perpetrate fraud should be dealt with by the legal authorities directly, regardless of the means they use to do so. Is General Motors responsible if someone intentionally drives their Chevrolet into a crowd of people?

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