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TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews

Posted by Soulskill on from the italy:-1-star,-didn't-elect-me-king dept.

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."

4 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. For crying out loud even TFA says why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "In one recent case, a hotel in Blackpool, England, fined a guest who posted a bad review..." If that's not a valid argument for anonymity on such sites I don't know what is!

  2. well, yes. Owners don't want to be on TripAdvisor. by Mirar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Two restaurants I really liked in Berlin, I talked to the owners about TripAdvisor:
    Neither was listed. I wanted to add them and tell others about how nice they were.

    They asked that I didn't put them (back) on TripAdvisor. Apparently people use sites like that to blackmail restaurants into service.

    That's why we can't have anything nice.

    Either TripAdvisor owns up and starts cleaning up false reviews, or it will get completely useless.

    Maybe the "star" rating system needs to go, and only allow reviews. Rate restaurants on how well-written the reviews are, and people can read for themselves. It should make it a lot more work to actually sink a restaurant.

  3. Erm, yeah by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Without some real world authentication of some sort, every review site is subject to fake reviews.

    Entities have way more incentive to create (fake) reviews (positive for them, negative for competitors) than real customers do to create real ones. I believe its called economics.

  4. Re:Relying on user reviews is stupid by davester666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A judge ruled that this practice wasn't extortion, but "hard bargaining". Hilarious.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/court-rules-yelp-can-manipulate-reviews-2014-9

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