Skin Care Company, Sunday Riley, Somehow Gets No Consequences In Fake Reviews FTC Settlement

from the none-off-their-back dept

We've long discussed the problem that is astroturfing and companies that abuse website reviews sections by inputting fake positive reviews for their own products. These fake reviews break the ecosystem of sites like Yelp and many others, where a big part of the draw to the sites are the communities that provide helpful, honest reviews. It's also been the case, however, that such fake review campaigns have occasionally come with fines or lawsuits with limited clarity on precisely what laws were being broken.

Still, the FTC is a thing and it would seem to be in that organization's purview to mete out some kind of punishment for the truly bad actors out there. In the case of skincare company Sunday Riley, however, it seems that FTC settlements for truly egregious fake review campaigns are entirely without teeth.

Let's start with the scheme itself. According to the FTC, for two years, spearheaded by founder Sunday Riley herself, employees and interns were tasked with both voting down real negative reviews on Sephora.com, as well as setting up fake accounts for Sephora and inputting fake positive reviews. This, again, was directly communicated by Riley herself.

The FTC shared snippets of multiple emails sent by the CEO. In these emails, Riley urged her employees to always use a "virtual private network", or VPN, before writing fake reviews so they aren't traced back to the company.

"If you see a negative review -- DISLIKE it," Riley said in one of her emails to employees. "After enough dislikes, it is removed. This directly translates to sales!!"

Most recently in April 2018, interns of the company were also asked to make fake Sephora accounts and write reviews of Sunday Riley skincare products.

So, yeah, really blatant, really fake, and really shady. This was a coordinated attempt to falsely manipulate the review system of Sephora for the purposes of fooling the public into buying more product. That certainly feels like about as blatant a case requiring FTC involvement as the fake review subject is going to get.

And the FTC did get involved. It pushed Sunday Riley into settling with the agency. And boy, what a settlement it was.

As part of the settlement, Sunday Riley agreed not to write fake reviews. The company did not admit wrongdoing or receive any form of punishment.  FTC commissioners Chopra and Slaughter disagreed with the settlement, arguing that the company should have paid a higher price.

"Going forward, the FTC should seek monetary consequences for fake review fraud, even if the exact level of ill-gotten gains is difficult to measure," Chopra and Slaughter said in their letter.

"Today's proposed settlement includes no redress, no disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, no notice to consumers, and no admission of wrongdoing. Sunday Riley and its CEO have clearly broken the law, and the Commission has ordered that they not break the law again."

Yeah, that's basically right. The FTC settled with Sunday Riley by simply asking that they please not break the law and act so shitty again. Meanwhile, the company has admitted no wrong doing, paid no fine, or suffered any other consequence. Honestly, what the point of this FTC settlement is, is beyond me. Are we to reach settlements with thieves that consist of a request that they not steal any longer?

Filed Under: fake reviews, ftc, punishment
Companies: sunday riley

Steam Yanks Another Developer's Games Over Fake Reviews Posted By Employee

from the when-will-they-learn? dept

Astro-turfing and fake reviews continue to be plagues upon the online marketplace, creating a wave of distrust with the public when it comes to properly assessing any business via online means. It's impossible to know how big or small a problem this is, which only adds to the distrust in the public, forcing them to assume the worst. All that being said, Valve has actually been pretty good about policing reviews on its gaming platform, Steam, and also making a big public stink about instances in which it has had to take action against developers for trying to game the review system. Studios have had their games pulled from the store entirely, such as when Digital Homicide and Insel Games each had their respective titles pulled. Given that Valve made sure the volume was turned up when it took such actions, one would think that game studios ought to have gotten the message by now.

And, yet, not all of them have. Acram Digital, a developer that makes digital versions of board games, just had all of its titles disappeared by Steam when it was discovered that an Acram employee was creating fake Steam accounts and posting fake positive reviews. As it did so, Valve released the following statement.

We’ve received a number of reports for Steam review manipulation on the titles Steam: Rails to Riches and Eight-Minute Empire, from Acram Digital. After investigating these reports we have found that the developer, Grzegorz Kubas, has been trying to inflate the user review score for his titles. This is against our policy, and something we take very seriously.

Because of Grzegorz's actions, we have removed all games/DLC developed by Acram from our store, and will no longer be doing business with him. Existing owners will be able to keep their titles.

Say what you will about Steam, but the platform has had a steady stream of consumer-friendly practices rolled out to gamers everywhere. These types of actions, particularly when accompanied by a public statement like this, are fantastic ways to preserve the trust gamers have in the platform and its review system. It's also a good way to demonstrate that, despite Steam wanting as many games as possible in its store, the platform also values the feedback and interests of its gaming customers.

For his part, Kubas has admitted to the wrong-doing, while also pleading on behalf of his employer.

You are right. I'm guilty. It came from my frustration of few bad, unfair reviews on Valve's Steam only. It was stupid action, not something planned. This is my individual, bad behavior, not the team, so I would like to blame me, not the devs. It's a lesson for the rest of my life and it will not happen again, ever.

Good on him for taking responsibility in this way, although it sure would be difficult to place full trust in the rest of the studio when one of its employees actively attempted to fool potential customers in this way. Maybe it's true that Acram had no idea he was doing this. Maybe not. The public sure can't know the answer to that question and it seems likely that the trust has been broken beyond repair at this point regardless.

Either way, game developers really ought to know at this point that there is no percentage in fake reviews. The costs are simply too high.

Filed Under: astroturfing, fake reviews, grzegorz kubas, reviews, steam
Companies: acram digital, valve

Game Studio Threatens Employees' Jobs If They Don't Write Positive Reviews Of Own Game, Then Steam Pulls Game Entirely

from the backfire dept

It's no secret that Valve's Steam platform is the dominant marketplace for PC video games. Much comes along with that status, including the strategies and metrics studios must employ to get their games noticed on Steam. One of the important metrics for recognition is Steam reviews. And it's not just the review scores themselves that are important, but actually getting reviews -- any reviews -- to begin with is a big deal.

So it's no surprise that game studios strategize on how to get their games in enough customer hands to generate reviews. Still, one studio's strategy has massively backfired. Insel Games out of Malta recently released Wild Buster, it's latest title. Sadly, in the all important initial release window, the game was not generating enough reviews to result in a general review score on the game page. Those scores are often used by consumers to quickly decide whether a title deserves their attention at all and a lack of a score can indicate that the game isn't good enough to even warrant a look. Insel's CEO, Patrick Steppel, decided to address this with a strongly-worded email to his own staff insisting that they all buy the game and review it, despite having had a hand in making the game. If employees refused to do this, Steppel warned that it could mean that they would no longer have a job at the studio.

“I had [sent] an email earlier but I was told that some of you announced to colleagues that you do not want to make a purchase of the game and/or a review. Frankly, this leaves me pretty disappointed. Of course I cannot force you to write a review (let alone tell you what to write) - but I should not have to. Neglecting the importance of reviews will ultimately cost jobs. If WB fails, Insel fails, IME fails and then we all will have no job next year. So I am asking you either of do the following: buy the game and present me the receipt until Friday night for which (together with a claim form) you will be re-imbursed within 24h or explain to me tomorrow why you do not wish to do this. I would like to discuss this individually and privately with each of you and will follow up.”

Corresponding with the timing of this email was a deluge of reviews suddenly washing over the game's Steam page, all of them glowingly positive. This, as many of you will know, is a form of astroturfing and it's plainly unethical. The point of reviews is for Steam customers to get a sense of what other Steam customers think of a game so as to inform their purchasing decisions. It is not a place for those who made the game to surreptitiously fool customers into thinking a game is better than it is by posting reviews from a clearly biased source. For the CEO of a studio to suggest employees do this at the end of a pointed employment-gun is all the more galling.

And, ultimately, ineffective, given that Valve has responded from pulling every single Insel Games product from its marketplace.

In a post last night on the Steam forums, a Valve representative wrote that as a result of this new information, the store has pulled all of Insel Games’ products. “The publisher appears to have used multiple Steam accounts to post positive reviews for their own games. This is a clear violation of our review policy and something we take very seriously. For these reasons, we are ending our business relationship with Insel Games Ltd. and removing their games from our store. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.”

Laughably, Streppel has publicly admitted to sending out the email while also insisting that he will appeal Valve's decision. What the basis of that appeal could be, given his admission, is anyone's guess. Streppel also insists that he didn't mean to threaten anyone's job and that he has not punished any employee that refused to write a review or buy the game, although that kind of gaslighting likely won't find much purchase in a gaming public that doesn't look kindly upon this kind of subterfuge.

So, the lesson is that game studios should take the efforts they would spend conniving over how to fool customers and just make great games instead. Otherwise, the backlash may be more than they can handle.

Filed Under: employees, fake reviews, patrick steppel, reviews, steam, wild buster
Companies: insel games, valve

Did A Non-Existent Eatery In A Shed Become TripAdvisor's Top-Rated Restaurant In London?

from the can-you-trust-anything-you-read-online-these-days? dept

A key feature of e-commerce sites is the reviews from people who have used them previously. Such recommendations or warnings are even more important online than in the physical world, because it is much easier to set up a virtual shop than a real one, which makes scams a far greater risk online. However, the enhanced importance of site reviews also increases the incentive to create false ones. A cautionary tale about just how misleading reviews can be is provided by an entertaining post on Vice. In it, the journalist Oobah Butler describes how he turned a non-existent eatery into TripAdvisor's top-rated London restaurant. Or at least that's what he claimed. We should admit, up front, that since this story is about faking stuff on the internet, we should at least be open to the idea that the story of this faked restaurant review might also be... fake.

Butler had the idea after earning money writing fake positive TripAdvisor reviews for restaurants he'd never been to. He started to wonder how many of the other positive reviews on TripAdvisor were similarly bogus. He idly considered whether it was possible for an entire restaurant to be fake -- that is, non-existent despite all the positive reviews. And then:

one day, sitting in the shed I live in, I had a revelation: within the current climate of misinformation, and society's willingness to believe absolute bullshit, maybe a fake restaurant is possible? Maybe it's exactly the kind of place that could be a hit?

In that moment, it became my mission. With the help of fake reviews, mystique and nonsense, I was going to do it: turn my shed into London's top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor.

There was nothing particularly sophisticated about Butler's methodology: he simply used lots of fake positive reviews, posted by real people on different computers so as to fool TripAdvisor's anti-scammer tools, to drive up the venue's ranking. He bolstered the plausibility of "The Shed at Dulwich" by creating a Web site -- theshedatdulwich.com -- and a suitably pretentious menu:

Instead of meals, our menu is comprised of moods. You choose which fits your day, and our Chef interprets that. We can also tailor dishes for special occasions and at extra cost.

For example:

Contemplation

A deconstructed Aberdeen stew; all elements of the dish are served to the table as they would be in the process of cooking. Served with warm beef tea.

Butler included a few photos of dishes, still visible on the home page of the Web site. They look appetizing enough, but in his Vice post describing the project, he reveals that they are made out of things like bleach tablets, and plastic sponges covered in paint. One image shows a poached egg resting on a slice of bacon -- except that the bacon is actually Butler's naked foot.

The Shed started out in April this year with a TripAdvisor ranking of 18,149, the worst restaurant in London, according to the site. So Butler piled on the reviews, and watched his ranking rise. The phone began to ring: people wanted to reserve tables at this non-existent restaurant. Butler told them it was booked up for weeks. Emails begging for bookings arrived, as did job applications to work at the business, and free samples from companies in the food industry. After just a few months, The Shed at Dulwich becomes London's top-rated restaurant on TripAdvisor, with 89,000 search result views in a single day. As Butler writes in his Vice post:

A restaurant that doesn't exist is currently the highest ranked in one of the world’s biggest cities, on perhaps the internet's most trusted reviews site.

He then did two things. First, he told TripAdvisor that he had managed to game its ranking system completely. Here's TripAdvisor's reply:

"Generally, the only people who create fake restaurant listings are journalists in misguided attempts to test us," replies a representative via email. "As there is no incentive for anyone in the real world to create a fake restaurant it is not a problem we experience with our regular community -- therefore this 'test' is not a real world example."

Well, maybe it isn't a "real world example", but it still shows how unreliable an online review system can be. In the case of The Shed, it wasn't that a few of the opinions for the restaurant were bogus, but that every single one was, and that nonetheless the venue ended up as the top-rated eatery in London according to TripAdvisor. Not surprisingly, the restaurant's page has been removed from the service, but there's an archived version to give you an idea of what it looked like at the height of its fake glory.

The other action taken by Butler was that he opened The Shed for real. You can find out on Butler's Vice post what happened when customers were served microwaved ready meals, surrounded by actors at other tables loudly praising the food, and a DJ playing restaurant sounds in the background to create the right ambience. It's a great story, and a warning that we shouldn't take at face value what we find online -- or what we eat in the physical world. Assuming it's all true, of course....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: fake reviews, oobah butler, restaurants, reviews
Companies: the shed at dulwich, tripadvisor

Game Developer Tried Threatening Game Reviewer And Posting Fake Steam Reviews To Be Successful; It Didn't Work

from the bye-bye dept

You may recall the rather short saga of video game studio Digital Homicide. That studio attempted to find success with a strange formula: sue game reviewers over negative reviews, sue Steam accounts for likewise negative reviews, find its game suddenly delisted from Steam entirely, and then declare itself dead. Not exactly the end that Digital Homicide was hoping for, certainly. One would have hoped that its story would serve as a warning to other game studios. And perhaps to some extent it has, as another game developer, Matan Cohen, ever so slightly altered the formula in probably the worst way possible.

It still starts off with abusing the DMCA process to take down negative reviews and threatening the reviewer with legal action, of course. In this case, we once again find Jim Sterling, the same reviewer threatened by Digital Homicide, being the victim of a game developer's abuse. After having first filed a DMCA claim on Sterling's review of the game Art of Stealth, Cohen then allegedly went on a legal threat binge against Sterling.

These kinds of threats never work, but behaving as though you were specifically attempting to follow the playbook of a now-dead game studio, even mimicking its targets in the game review community, seems like a terrible business strategy. But, as I said, Cohen does indeed deviate from the Digital Homicide playbook at this point. Cohen has by all accounts not attempted to sue Steam users for what have likewise been fairly negative reviews on his game's Steam page.

Instead, he appears to have decided to simply make up a bunch of Steam accounts and have them post fake reviews for his game instead. It was apparently blatant enough that Steam investigated and decided to push the button on the nuclear option and remove the game from Steam entirely.

We (Valve) have identified unacceptable behavior involving multiple Steam accounts controlled by the developer of this game, Matan Cohen. The developer appears to have created multiple Steam accounts to post a positive review for their own game. This is a clear violation of our review policy and something we take very seriously.

For these reasons, we are ending our business relationship with Matan Cohen and removing this game from sale. If you have previously purchased this game, it will remain accessible in your Steam library.

When, oh when, will content makers realize that making war on negative reviews of their works is a losing proposition. The focus needs to be on making great content and connecting with people, not wielding legal threats as a cudgel. And, for the love of the universe, attempting to fake positive coverage can only serve to torpedo your career.

Filed Under: art of stealth, censorship, copyright, dmca, fake reviews, jim sterling, reviews, threats, video games
Companies: valve

Italian Regulators Fine TripAdvisor For Not Sniffing Out Every Single Fake Review On The Site

from the thank-goodness-for-section-230 dept

We've talked quite a bit about the importance of Section 230 of the CDA in the US, and how it protects internet sites from the actions of their users. Some have tried to downplay the importance of Section 230, arguing that it goes too far in protecting bad behavior, or even arguing that it has little impact on innovation. Yet, take a look at the situation in Italy, where regulators are now fining TripAdvisor because some people put up fake reviews on the site:

The American company, which allows travelers to rate hotels and restaurants around the world, has been fined 500,000 euros, or about $610,000, by an Italian regulator for not doing enough to prevent false reviews on its site.

The fine represents one of the first times that a review site has faced financial penalties in Europe or the United States for failing to clamp down on potentially false reviews.

The regulator, the Italian Competition Authority, called on TripAdvisor to stop “publishing misleading information about the sources of its reviews,” and gave the company 90 days to comply with the ruling.

Except, of course, it's not TripAdvisor "publishing" the "misleading information." It's TripAdvisor's users. This is the key point that we've made about Section 230: that it forces people to recognize the difference between a site and its users. In the past, we've even noted that we shouldn't even need a Section 230 because it should be common sense that you don't blame a site for the actions of its users -- but seeing how frequently people do that, the importance of Section 230 is quickly obvious.

TripAdvisor says it's going to appeal the decision -- as it should. Otherwise, it makes you wonder if TripAdvisor should bother doing business in Italy at all. And that would be a real shame. Just last year I visited Italy, and TripAdvisor was tremendously helpful in picking the hotel where I stayed (which turned out to be wonderful). Blaming and fining the site because some people misuse it seems like setting a really dangerous precedent.

Filed Under: competition, fake reviews, italy, regulators, reviews, section 230
Companies: tripadvisor

The War On Fake Reviews Ramps Up: NY Fines Companies For Fake Yelp Reviews

from the this-could-get-interesting dept

It would appear that there's finally a bit of a war on fake reviews. Just a few weeks ago, we noted how Yelp had sued a law firm for posting fake reviews. And a few days ago, NY's Attorney General announced $350,000 in fines against 19 companies for writing fake reviews.

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that 19 companies had agreed to cease their practice of writing fake online reviews for businesses and to pay more than $350,000 in penalties. "Operation Clean Turf," a year-long undercover investigation into the reputation management industry, the manipulation of consumer-review websites, and the practice of astroturfing, found that companies had flooded the Internet with fake consumer reviews on websites such as Yelp, Google Local, and CitySearch. In the course of the investigation, the Attorney General's office found that many of these companies used techniques to hide their identities, such as creating fake online profiles on consumer review websites and paying freelance writers from as far away as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe for $1 to $10 per review. By producing fake reviews, these companies violated multiple state laws against false advertising and engaged in illegal and deceptive business practices.

NY actually set up a whole sting operation, posing as a Yogurt shop in Brooklyn, asking SEO companies how to deal with negative reviews. Some of the companies offered to write up fake reviews, and suddenly NY had some targets to investigate. While many of the companies NY went after were SEO/digital marketing companies, some were the companies who hired astroturfers themselves (and the NY AG even calls them astroturfers). This includes US Coachways, a big charter bus company and Laser Cosmetica, a laser hair removal place in the NYC area.

Given just how frequently astroturfing seems to happen these days, it could be interesting to see if there's a bigger crackdown by consumer protection agencies, arguing that astroturfing is a form of false advertising. Still, as some are pointing out, there are many reasons for fake reviews that have nothing to do with a business paying people to write them good reviews -- and that's why fake reviews may be difficult to really stop.

Filed Under: astroturfing, fake reviews, new york
Companies: yelp

Yelp Sues Law Firm For Posting Fake Reviews

from the be-careful-what-you-review dept

Fake reviews online are something many people have just come to expect. Just recently we discussed an example of where it was obvious there were a ton of fake reviews on Amazon.com. Many sites that include user reviews work pretty hard to scrub the obviously fake ones, but it appears Yelp has taken that to a new level, deciding to sue a law firm for posting fake reviews. It should be noted that this same law firm, McMillan Group, previously had sued Yelp, claiming that it had been "coerced" into buying ads to get favorable reviews, so you could argue that there's a reason this particular firm was targeted. But, either way, it raises some fairly interesting legal questions.

Specifically, Yelp is arguing that when McMillan employees created fake accounts in order to post bogus positive reviews for their own firm, they violated the terms of service of the site. Thankfully, (unlike Craigslist), Yelp doesn't try to argue that violating the TOS is a CFAA violation. Instead, the lawsuit focuses on some specific charges including breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, unfair competition and false advertising.

The filing details, rather comprehensively, how over a period of a few months, it appears that employees at the firm created accounts and immediately posted positive reviews of the firm, sometimes claiming things that are unlikely to be true. For example, certain users claim to be clients of the firm, which focuses on bankruptcy law, and then point out that the individuals in question have never filed for bankruptcy. There's also an amusing bit in which four accounts are created, one after the other, from a McMillan IP address, each leaving very positive reviews within minutes of creation, then logging out right before another account is created. And, of course, none of those accounts ever logged back in. Oh, and two of the accounts created one after the other started their posts with the identical sentence, including a typo:

They promissed [sic] me a fresh start through a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and I got it.

Same exact sentence in both, one posted right after the other, but with different names and different accounts. Throughout the filing, you realize that these attempts to fake reviews are so hamhanded, that they were clearly done by someone who has no idea how to cover their own tracks. There were lots of cases of using the same IP address which was already associated with the company. In another case, the same email address is used for multiple accounts. It's as if they don't realize that Yelp can check these things.

No matter what, this should be an interesting lawsuit. While it does seem pretty clear that Yelp has caught this firm red-handed writing fake reviews, there are some pretty big questions as to whether or not that's actually a legal offense for the courts to sort out. There's a part of me that thinks that Yelp has every right to take action on its own site against those reviews and reviewers -- such as deleting the reviews and banning the reviewers -- but making the legal claims stick feels like a pretty big stretch. Also, some of the reviews they complain about don't even seem that questionable -- such as the so-called "circle of local lawyers" in San Diego who all reviewed each other. In some cases, those reviews just say things about how they recommend their own clients to those other lawyers when an issue comes up (such as bankruptcy) that another lawyer specializes in. That may actually be completely accurate.

There may be something to the fact that lawyer advertisements tend to be much more heavily regulated, so I could see a potential issue with false advertising, but I'm not sure that that's an issue for Yelp to take up directly, rather than whoever's in charge of making sure lawyers are advertising within the limitations of existing regulations. There's also some potential argument that a customer of the law firm could have standing to argue that they were harmed after believing fake reviews (though, even that's a stretch), but to argue that Yelp itself is harmed is, again, a bigger stretch (not impossible, but not a slam dunk).

None of this is a defense of the actions of whoever wrote those reviews, as it appears there's fairly strong evidence that the reviews are faked, I'm just not convinced that means it violates the law.

Filed Under: breach of contract, fake reviews, false advertising, law firms, reviews
Companies: mcmillan group, yelp

Cosmetic Surgery Company 'Fesses Up To Widespread Campaign Of Fake Reviews; Pays Fine

from the some-questions-though... dept

The NY Times has an article about how LifeStyle Lift, a company that does cosmetic surgery (facelifts) has reached a settlement with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over posting fake reviews on its site. It wasn't just a case of some "rogue" employees posting some fake positive reviews, either. The company apparently sent out emails to employees telling them to "devote the day to doing more postings on the Web as a satisfied client." It also created its own fake facelift review websites that (of course) reflected positively on themselves. The company has apologized and agreed to pay $300,000.

Now, it's clear that the company was doing a bad thing here, but there are some questions raised about this. Eric Goldman, who also notes that the company previously had sued a review site that had many negative reviews for trademark infringement (a clear misuse of trademark law to stifle free speech), points out that it's unclear what law was actually broken here. Andrew Cuomo claims that what the company did was illegal, but doesn't point to any specific law that says so. We've seen this before from Cuomo, who has publicly accused companies of breaking the law, without ever naming the law in question.

That said, it's clear in this case that LifeStyle Lift was a bad actor. The question is how to deal with it. Goldman suggests that review sites and consumers should deal with this themselves:

Ultimately, I believe the burden should largely rest on review websites to provide a forum that is sufficiently game-resistant that consumers can trust the information on the website.... In my opinion, the only real "solution" to fake consumer reviews is to teach consumers proper techniques for searching for information and evaluating the credibility of the information they consume. This is one of those crucial life-coping skills that everyone needs to learn at an early age, right up there with the three Rs and how to manage money. Education is the only scalable answer to the problems of information credibility in our complex information society.

For the most part, I agree... though I do wonder if there's potential to make a claim that the practices violate truth in advertising type laws or other consumer protection laws on deceptive practices. Of course, I would assume that it would then be an issue for the FTC, rather than the NY Atotorney General's office.

Filed Under: andrew cuomo, fake reviews, legality
Companies: lifestyle lift