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."

Comments

Not the first!

[Mathinker]

Sony got caught doing this a while back:

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4741259.stm

The link is to the BBC coverage of the California court decision.
I found out about it after reading a Slashdot post panning one of the movies which was pushed this way.

Re:Not the first!

[Anonymous Coward]

And to throw in another, Belkin were also caught paying people to do reviews on some tech websites fairly recently, the whole "pay for good review" thing.

So many links on it, it is just better to link the search.
Belkin Paying for good reviews

And funny thing about these is that so many companies do it, even small-time shops, anything to get customers.
And if you were to ask most of them if they knew the legality of it, they'd never think once that it was illegal.

Re:legal

[TheRealMindChild]

False Advertisement.

You and I can say anything about any product we want... that's our opinion. But if the company making a product makes claims that are untrue about said product it's False Advertisement. These people just try to hide it by pretending to not be affiliated with the company. That may even be in itself Fraud.

Re:So they couldn't shout across the office?

[2obvious4u]

This case is Fraud.
Spreading FUD would be Slander/Defamation.

Re:So they couldn't shout across the office?

[pizzach]

The most interesting thing about slashdot is when I think I may be moderated funny, I get moderated insightful. When I think I am insightful, I am funny. When I think I am a troll, I am insightful. Such a confusing community we have here.

Google is overwhelmed by Lifestyle Lift web sites.

[Futurepower(R)]

Do a Google search for Lifestyle Lift. In the first three pages of Google results, ALL EXCEPT THREE are from web sites operated by Lifestyle Lift, apparently.

This is the most intense attack on social, psychological, and technical weaknesses than I've ever seen. In my opinion, it is likely to be dishonest.

And the company was only fined $300,000, an amount that is likely to be less than a day's income, I'm guessing.