Battling the blight of spoof reviews
Tech giants that operate in India’s e-commerce world are inundated with fake reviews. But recently, the country’s regulators finally moved ahead with a new set of rules aiming to curb the nuisance.
The Delhi government has released a framework to curb fake and misleading reviews on e-commerce platforms and portals offering tour and travel services, restaurants, eateries and consumer durables.
Other countries may now follow suit in offsetting the deluge of reviews – often fake – that blight so many businesses.
Tackling the phantom menace
The plan drawn up by authorities is first to start with voluntary moderation and then progress to mandatory requirements if the growth of fake reviews continues.
This comes over a year after New Delhi proposed tougher e-commerce rules to restrict false reviews and overall address “widespread cheating” complaints.
Under the guidelines, platforms will be required to set up administrators to moderate reviews, using automated tools or manually to filter out biases and restrict fraudulent posts. The reviews should also include the publishing date and star rating, the framework said.
Consumers should not be allowed to edit their reviews and use foul language. Platforms should also restrict authors giving fraudulent reviews from publishing such reviews in the future, the guidelines stated.
Consumers play their part
With new rules that are sure to please businesses in this area globally, the onus will also be on reviewers to prove they are real.
Authors submitting reviews online will be required to verify their identity by platforms. Platforms will verify consumers’ identity from their email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses or by using a Captcha system, the guidelines said.
In addition to online platforms, the newly released guidelines will apply to third parties conducting reviews on the web.
“We believe feedback mechanisms such as reviews are essential for consumer interest. We welcome the steps being taken by the government to create necessary standards and are obliged to be a part of the constituted committee,” Jaskiran Bedi, lead, public policy at the food delivery app, Zomato, said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Singh said Tata Sons, Amazon, Flipkart, Reliance Retail, Zepto, Blinkit, Google, Meta, Swiggy, Zomato and Meesho were a part of the discussions and were looking to self-regulate over fake reviews.
Our take
India is leading and others are surely set to follow, in what can only be a good thing for both businesses and consumers. And that puts investments in such areas in a better light.
Global bodies including the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Federal Trade Commission in the US are working towards limiting misleading reviews online.
Last year, Amazon equivocated on its responsibility on fake reviews and announced blocking more than 200 million such suspected reviews in 2020 before they appeared to consumers, without seeking a long-term fix, as reported in the business press. But could Amazon – and others – now take a fresh approach?
For example, the British competition watchdog also last year probed Amazon and Google over false reviews on their platforms. In June, Meta updated its Community Feedback Policy to restrict irrelevant reviews on Facebook.
So, positive developments seem to be in the pipeline for such businesses.