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Internet Astroturfer Fined $300,000
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company who posted fake reviews of their services on various websites, will have to pay $300,000 to the state of New York. Cuomo's office says this is the first US case to specifically target astroturfing on the internet.
"Internal emails discovered by Attorney General Cuomo's investigation show that Lifestyle Lift employees were given specific instructions to engage in this illegal activity. One e-mail to employees said: 'Friday is going to be a slow day — I need you to devote the day to doing more postings on the web as a satisfied client.' Another internal email directed a Lifestyle Lift employee to 'Put your wig and skirt on and tell them about the great experience you had.' In addition to posting on various Internet message board services, Lifestyle Lift also registered and created stand-alone Web sites, such as MyFaceliftStory.com, designed to appear as if they were created by independent and satisfied customers of Lifestyle Lift. The sites offered positive narratives about the Lifestyle Lift experience. Some of these sites purported to offer forums for users to add their own comments about Lifestyle Lift. In reality, however, Lifestyle Lift either provided all the 'user comments' themselves, or closely monitored and edited third-party comments to skew the discussion in favor of Lifestyle Lift."
OK, they are lying. Everybody lies. All advertising is lying in one form or another. Do believe that went some celebrity appears on TV for a product that they really use it? Or know anything about it other than what the teleprompter is telling them to say?
Yes, this company sounds like they were using the "power of the Internet" a little more forcefully than others are today, but exactly what law did they break? False advertising? I doubt it. Certainly no more false than Wilford Brimley talking about Liberty Medical products as if he was at all familiar with the company before they started paying him.
No, this isn't a good start. This is not "making the Internet safer." If you believe testimonials on the Internet you are a fool, because all of them are designed to elicit behavior - yours. Every single review someone takes the time to write is either telling you how great something is or how bad. Either way, someone was so motivated as to write the review to "help" others to make the "right" decision. I wouldn't trust any of them, especially when it is not tied to anyone's real identity. How many people are out there putting up fake reviews, positive or negative, because they are paid to do so? How many people are putting up fake reviews because they have some other motive? For all you know, the person doing it could just hate the founder of the company because he beat them up in 3rd grade.
In all honesty, I find anyone who responds to a comment about the existence of shills with "I am not a shill" to be very, very suspect. Nobody was calling you out, nor am I now, and yet I'm pretty confident you feel that I am.
Point being, if your opinions are well founded and phrased well, the metamod system tends to handle the rest. Usually, anyway. You could even BE a shill, and if you made good posts you'd still be very successful.