Fake Reviewers Snared in NY Attorney General Yogurt Sting

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/09/23/us/23reuters-fake-reviewers.html?hp&_r=0

by DiabloD3 • 13 years ago

65 67 13 years ago

gcb02• 13 years ago

great. What's next? Tax money used to secure all of slashdot first posts to prevent trolls from getting it?

conover• 13 years ago

So you're saying that government shouldn't attempt to identify and prosecute those who it believes "breached laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices."

trysomething• 13 years ago

Yeah, in this case it should be Yelp's job to filter out fake reviews. Yelp should foot the bill for operations like this or for engineers to write better algorithms.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

any idea what this program cost? Does the 350k fully cover the costs?

dnautics2• 13 years ago

isn't this yelp's job to police? Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?

tzs• 13 years ago

Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?

It isn't. It's going into catching people violating various criminal laws against fraud. That stopping such people happens to help Yelp is a side-effect.

argumentum2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how the reviewers themselves violated laws against fraud. If anything, the businesses that paid for the reviews violated said laws.

Zikes2• 13 years ago

Alright, so New York's relevant offices get a lot of complaints of false advertising in various online forums in the form of fake reviews. Obviously this is bad for legitimate businesses in the area, because their reputation could be negatively affected to a fairly significant degree, especially if the practice is allowed to continue.

So what should they do about it? It's a matter of fraud, it just happens to take place online, and probably in more places than just yelp.com. Since it's fraud, they have an obligation to investigate and prosecute it, and a sting operation like this is probably one of the most effective means of doing so.

This is New York saying they care about their businesses, and that they're willing to take action to protect them. I mean, would you want to open a yogurt shop in New York if you knew it'd have to shut down in less than a year because of a bunch of false negative reviews online? What would be the potential economic impact of that hostile sort of environment?

downandout6• 13 years ago

Who is the government to say that a particular review isn't authentic? Reviews are subjective. While it is in fact a difficult argument to say that a review for the fake business used in this entrapment operation is authentic, perhaps I love or don't love the name or location of the business, and give it a rating based upon that. Maybe I own a yogurt shop, and automatically hate all of my competitors. No one can tell me that I can't like or dislike any business for any reason, whether I have visited them or not.

There is a reason that 100% of these cases were settled....these cases would have been laughed out of a courtroom on constitutional grounds. Personally, I would have forced them to take it to court, but most businesses don't want the headache.

reustle• 13 years ago

Who is the government to say that a particular review isn't authentic?

They set up a fake shop, didn't you read the article?

dragonwriter7• 13 years ago

Who is the government to say that a particular review isn't authentic?

The government.

Reviews are subjective.

That doesn't mean that they aren't fraudulent in how they portray, among other things, their provenance. (It also doesn't mean they aren't false in how they portray facts; the fact that some parts of reviews, such as ratings, are subjective doesn't mean that they don't include fact claims which are objectively true or false.)

There is a reason that these cases were settled

Yeah, because the people on the receiving side considered that their probability of winning at trial and getting off with no penalty did not outweigh the cost of trial plus (probability of a penalty being imposed) × (the likely cost of any imposed penalty).

had a single one of these actually been brought into a courtroom, the case would have been laughed out of it on constitutional grounds.

Were that the case, that would have been a major disincentive for the targets to settle.

AJ007• 13 years ago

$350,000 divided by 19, that is more embarrassing to the NY Attorney General than the companies named.

On the other hand the FTC has oversight on this, and there are already existing rules in place. These companies are hardly limited in their exposure or liability from one side.

The FTC has pretty wide purview as to what it wants to do, and the powers that go with it. They can take all of your money, bar you from life from a particular industry,and if you pretend you are broke when your not put you in jail.

As far as US case law goes, yes the government can go after you for making up stuff about a commercial action.

blisterpeanuts2• 13 years ago

They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are going to be bogus.

But suppose you open a legitimate yogurt shop in Brooklyn, and the competing yogurt shop down the street hires one of those shady Bangladeshi outfits to post a bunch of positive reviews of your business, then rats you out to the AG. The AG is going to come down on you pretty hard, and you're fined, and you're out of business. Mission accomplished.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. This is not an enforceable kind of law.

New York spends a lot of time and money on rather esoteric cases like this when there's plenty of good old fashioned street crimes they could be putting their resources into instead: muggings, gang-related activities, car theft, things that everyone living and working in NYC has to deal with every day of the year.

downandout6• 13 years ago

They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are going to be bogus.

Even that isn't necessarily the case. If someone likes the name, location, or nature of the business, as long as they don't say that they visited or had an experience there, no one can say that a positive review of even a fictional business is bogus if the reviewer has a good faith belief that the business exists. In fact it could be argued that the reviewers in this case relied upon fraudulent representations made by the investigators that the business existed and was worthy of positive reviews, and are therefore not liable. It's such a subjective issue, and that of course is why these accusations were settled far outside of a courtroom.

jessaustin• 13 years ago

In other words, be careful what you wish for.

Please, we've been assured that this will be the first expansion of police powers into new, unfamiliar domains that doesn't have "unintended" consequences.

cjdavis• 13 years ago

That's why the AG created the fake yogurt shop. Zero difficultly in determining the fake reviews. I doubt they would take on the case of a single shop's problems.

aleyan• 13 years ago

I have been living in NYC for the past 5 years. These are the things I dealt with:

  [ ] muggings
  [ ] gang-related activities
  [ ] car theft
  [X] false restaurant reviews

anigbrowl3• 13 years ago

Wrong, because if you were prosecuted they'd have to show that the purchase of the shill reviews came from you. If it turned out that the order was placed from an IP address connected with your competitor down the street - which it would during even a cursory investigation - then it would be your competitor that was in hot water with the law, not you.

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

A few things here bother me:

- You can frequently find fraudulent positive product reviews on amazon; there is a community that writes satirical reviews for fun. I really don't like the principle that doing something for your own personal amusement is fine, but doing it for profit is illegal. (Yes, I'm aware that this principle is deeply embedded in US law. I just hate it. I also hate the similar principle of "X shall be legal if you are a good person, but illegal if you are an evil person".)

- Many, many comments in this thread (like yours!) are defending the idea of punishing false negative reviews. False negative reviews are not even mentioned in the article. Would you want to open a yogurt shop if you knew you'd have to deal with other yogurt shops getting positive reviews online?

- People seem to like thinking of false reviews as "fraud". "Fraud" doesn't mean lying. Since the people hypothetically making false statements aren't actually getting any money from the people they're making false statements to, and aren't even targeting any identifiable person, a fraud charge might be difficult to stick. (Or it might not; wire fraud is notorious for its applicability to anyone and everyone.)

- Suppose I take money to write a positive review of a yogurt shop desiring the same. I write "Of all the yogurt shops in <area>, this one is my favorite. The food is everything I expect and I have a great relationship with the people there. Highly recommended." It's intentionally misleading, in that I like them because they pay me to like them, but it is punctiliously honest. Under what grounds should that be punishable?

nostromo• 13 years ago

It makes much more sense for Yelp to go after spammers, in the same way Google does. Not the NY Attorney General.

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

These aren't (just) spammers, though - they are people committing fraud against New York State businesses[0]. They just happen to be committing fraud on an online platform.

[0] Or rather, New York State businesses themselves committing fraud (if they are the ones writing fake positive reviews about themselves)

(Edited to reflect argumentum's reply),

argumentum2• 13 years ago

Can you explain how the reviewers are committing fraud? If anything, it's the businesses falsely advertising.

taopao• 13 years ago

Oh noes, think of the growth hackings!

aurelius83• 13 years ago

I find it very worrisome that the government views online anonymous postings on a private website as advertisement to be enforced by public agencies.

But, I guess it's no different than the government regulating anonymous online speech about stocks.

Zikes2• 13 years ago

Speech is free right up to where it interferes with others' freedoms and liberties, which is why we have slander/libel laws, etc.

The medium doesn't exempt people from those laws.

thaumasiotes2• 13 years ago

But false positive reviews are extremely unlikely to fall afoul of libel laws...

dragonwriter7• 13 years ago

I find it very worrisome that the government views online anonymous postings on a private website as advertisement to be enforced by public agencies.

Why? I mean, in which of the cases where they were specifically treated as "advertisement" were the facts of case such that the postings should not have been viewed as an advertisement?

Why, particularly, would any of these facts make an advertisement any less an advertisement, or any less subject to any regulation that applies to advertisement generally?

1. The fact that the source is concealed ("anonymous postings")

2. The fact that it is published via a privately owned channel ("private")

3. The fact that it is published on the web ("website")

downandout6• 13 years ago

This operation seems like a complete waste of taxpayer money. While paid reviews are a violation of Yelp's TOS, since most businesses didn't add themselves to Yelp (they were added by reviewers or Yelp itself), they have not agreed to and are not subject to those TOS. Some incredibly blatant actions may qualify as fraud, but the bar for avoiding such accusations is very low. Businesses can simply ask paid reviewers not to post inauthentic reviews, and they have met their burden.

criley22• 13 years ago

Lying about a business in a public forum with the sole motivation of harming the business... that's fraud.

"fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual;" Not a legal definition, but a good enough definition for now.

I think it's a decent use of taxpayer money to help combat the defrauding of businesses in the area.

If they were printing these fake derogatory reviews in local newspapers or on local TV, would your opinion of the fraud change?

r00fus• 13 years ago

The NYT article shouldn't say "fake" but "fraudulent", as that's the crux of the issue.

I can put up a fake review, but if it's with the intent to harm, it's fraudulent.

Now what do we do about fake reviews that are puff pieces intended to goose ratings?

CamperBob2• 13 years ago

I'm of two minds about it. It doesn't seem like a solid legal argument for the state to make on a criminal-law basis -- who's to say that bogus reviews aren't "free speech?" -- and I don't see how they have standing to bring civil actions. Perhaps an attorney could comment to fill in some of the many blanks left by the NYT article?

The other side of the coin is that from the perspective of the victimized businesses, fake reviews are equivalent to any other form of organized crime. Same effect, in that the business (metaphorically) burns down if you don't pay off any of the numerous entitles laying claim to your customers' mindshare... entities among whom Yelp itself is the least shady. There's got to be some way to stop this behavior before we all live and work under the online version of the Russian mafia.

o0-0o• 13 years ago

Does anyone have a list of the names of the companies?

lawnchair_larry• 13 years ago

Very happy to see this. These companies are shameless, and there needs to be a deterrent against businesses trying to deceive consumers doing research. This has nothing to do with free speech.

205guy• 13 years ago

Wow, the comments here are a story in-and-of themselves. I have to wonder if the people questioning state involvement are not astro-turfing here as well (in defense of the companies that got snared).

To make a bad pun, it's not free speech if you have to be paid for it. The state will go after those who pay or receive money for what they say.

nlh• 13 years ago

Here's a question, based on an experience. Two scenarios:

A) A company posts fake reviews about itself, through whatever means. Consumers get a false representation of the business. The company and its associates are the bad guys, Yelp is the good guy.

B) Yelp's filters hide most positive reviews about a company, leaving only negative reviews. All reviews are legitimate. Consumers get an equally false impression of the business. Yelp is the bad guy.

Why is A) illegal and deserving of state interference, but B) is totally legal and continues today?

Fake Reviewers Snared in NY Attorney General Yogurt Sting

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