TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews

mpicpp writes with news that TripAdvisor, a travel website filled with user-generated reviews, has been hit with a €500,000 ($611,000) fine for "misleading customers" by failing to cull fake reviews from their list. "The regulator complained that people reading TripAdvisor Italy were unable to distinguish between genuine and fake reviews posted on the site. It said both were presented by TripAdvisor as 'authentic and genuine in nature.' Demanding payment of the fine within 30 days, the ICA also accused the travel company of failing to provide proper checks to weed out bogus postings."

Comments

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[lastman71]

The regulator complained that people reading TripAdvisor Italy were unable to distinguish between genuine and fake reviews posted on the site.

So how is TripAdvisor supposed to do it?

By stopping advertising that every reviews are genuine. The complaint is about false advertisment (the review on our site are all genuine and verified), not about fake review. http://www.agcm.it/stampa/comu... :

In particolare, TripAdvisor pubblicizza la propria attività mediante claim commerciali che, in maniera particolarmente assertiva, enfatizzano il carattere autentico e genuino delle recensioni, inducendo così i consumatori a ritenere che le informazioni siano sempre attendibili in quanto espressione di reali esperienze turistiche.

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[lachlan76]

Looking at the judgement, it seems that the issue was that TripAdvisor claimed repeatedly in their advertising that the reviews were true, genuine, and trustworthy, but that the investigator was able to post blatantly false reviews. From footnote 146,

A titolo meramente esemplificativo si riporta il testo di alcune di tali recensioni:

i) “Ci è piaciuto tantissimo!!! Ma non sono sicuro se era questo ristorante o el kebab che è lì vicino. I filtri di TA non funzionano qui si può scrivere qualsiasi cosa”, recensione rilasciata per il ristorante “Combal.zero” di Rivoli e pubblicata in data 6 settembre 2014;

ii) “I’ve never been here!!! This websites has NO filters so I can say anything about this Restaurant and everyone is going to believe it. Buonanotte”, recensione rilasciata per il ristorante “Osteria francescana” di Modena e pubblicata in data 6 settembre 2014;

iii) “È senza dubbio il miglior ristorante cinese di Milano. Ottima l’anatra, gran buffet, camerieri gentili. Fantastici filtri sulle recensioni come potete osservare! Cinque palle verdi”, recensione rilasciata per il ristorante “Pomodoro & basilico” di San Mauro Torinese e pubblicata in data 4 settembre 2014.

[Probably terrible] translation:

i) We liked it _so_ much! But I'm not sure whether it was this restaurant or the kebab shop nearby. TA's filter doesn't work...here one can write whatever they want

iii) It is without doubt the best Chinese restaurant in Milan. Excellent duck, big buffet, polite staff. These are fantastic filters of the reviews, as you can see! (note: the restaurant is named "Tomato & Basil" and so clearly not Chinese)

I live in Italy and...

[ctrl-alt-canc]

...my experience with site reviewing restaurants is awful. I use them just as search engines to find a list of restaurants close to my location, then I ask to friends if they visited them. To my experience sites like Tripadvisor are just too much infested by fake reviews, either positive or negative. Among the reviews, last month I found on Tripadvisor a nice gem: a very positive comment about a restaurant very close to where I live. The restaurant was indeed excellent and reasonably cheap, but it was shut down more than two years ago, and the review was posted last month...draw your own conclusions.