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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."
Parent is incorrect! (and in need of a spell checker) Mod parent down! (Let's show them that the moderation system works better than anything Tripadvisor has)
Very nice post. I enjoyed every part of it. Everything was top notch clean, the personnel was courteous. I highly recommend this post to everybody.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Apparently, yes. Of course, the word is that Italy's court system is a total crock overall, but I have no personal experience to confirm or deny that.
In the absence of that, making companies liable for "failing to weed out" fake reviews essentially means no more reviews, period. I think I'd rather be able to decide for myself based on the content of the reviews whether I believe them or not, as long as the site isn't actively encouraging fakes and will at least look over and possibly do some minimal investigation into complaints of "fake" reviews when reported.
Reviews should be hidden for A/Cs. A/C's opinion is worth less than a human's.
Learn to love Alaska
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?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I know the argument about how anonymity is needed on the internet. Not sure it's necessary on places like TripAdvisor. It sucks that freedom of speech isn't respected under dictatorships, but what can be gained from allowing the average North Korean sneaking on to the internet to anonymously review a shitty fleabag hotel in Paraguay?
Because said companies fradulently claim these reviews are legitimate.
Funny, I never felt compelled to believe them. Let them say what they want. Just take extra cash and some bug spray.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I guess Yelp doesn't even bother ACK'ing TCP connections from Italy then...
Their whole business model is to write fake bad reviews for companies and make it hard to see any good reviews unless the company "buys some advertising" from them.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"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!
Take a look at the OP. I know, it's not fashionable, but OP actually contains the exact citation you're asking for.
That's irrelevant. It's consumer protection agency's job to protect customer against misrepresentation of the service. They are performing their job here.
They were not fined because they had fake reviews in the first place; they were fined for fraudolent advertising, because their billboards were like "I haz one bazillion reviews!! And they are totally genuine and authentic from real people!!1!"
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
You mean TFA? Yeah it mentions an alleged claim by ICA that TripAdvisor supposedly does this, but that's essentially hearsay with no detail at all. Most any reasonable (non Italian?) person would automatically assume that user generated content is generally shown as submitted and know that anyone can submit one, so unless the site actually says something to the effect of "We affirm and verify that all posted reviews are submitted by real customers representing their true experiences" then I call B.S. I still want to know why there's even an Italian Competition Authority in the first place, what it is, and why it should have any "authority" at all. I guess it's a quasi-government entity of some sort? Seems kind of like their equivalent of the US FTC, but more anal and xenophobic.
And I have never seen reference to any such specific claims nor observed them on any ads or billboards, nor are they in TFA, nor mentioned by anyone here thus far, and I didn't see anything of the sort on a quick glance through the TripAdvisor site either, hence *CITATION NEEDED... get it now?
This is the first review site has faced financial penalties in Europe or the United States for failing to clamp down on potentially false reviews... There is no certainty of information in such sites...
Consumers can be protected against fradulent services that use consumers rather than sell to consumers.
There is nothing unusual about it.
The pizza was gummy, the wine tasted of vinegar, the bread was at least two days old and they even charged 5$ for a bottle of water that was brought on the table already open, maybe refilled of tap water. I definitely do not recommend, please steer clear of vikingpower pizza lest they ruin your trip more than the corrupt police officers who fined your car that was perfectly parked within the free parking lot.
You surely set a good example of what this New Internet would be like, right Mr. Anony Mouse?
Anyone can write a review.
As well as a /. comment.
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.
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.
If you're expecting legalese on Italian justice system in a quick article about corporation complaining about local laws, you must have lived under a rock.
Arm yourself with google and search there. I frankly cannot be bothered to link to LMGTFY.
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.
I had that experience with a restaurant in Panama City called La Esquina Van Gogh. It was an outstanding, impeccable fine dining establishment just a bit off the main drag which was languishing for lack of business. I tried to add it to TripAdvisor, and they declined to utilize my review. They just blew it off entirely, I presume after soliciting a bribe from the owner.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're a plonker. They specifically posted reviews themselves, one calling a restaurant named Tomato and Basil "the best chinese restaurant in Milan" . These reviews were neither reviewed nor removed, therfor, there needs to be indication that there is no filtering of the the user posted content (except for bad word filters.. maybe).
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
...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.
corrupt police officers who fined your car that was perfectly parked within the free parking lot
Because someone put a potentially fake note on your windshield saying "nice car".
If only Lonely Planet would advice people what Italian policemen mean when they ask you for a cup of coffee. I's all their fault, I think I'm going to sue them.
Leggiti il fottuto articolo. http://www.agcm.it/trasp-statistiche/doc_download/4619-ps9345scorrsanz-omi.html".
Ci sono tutte le citazioni.
TripAdvisor and platforms like it are almost ransomware. You, a customer, will make a review for an establishment and then they will e-mail that establishment with a notice "Hey you got a 5 star review, wouldn't it be great if someone could see it?" or better yet "Hey you got a 1 star review, (which is up right now for everyone to see) don't you want to respond to it or how about you buy our executive-platinum-double-gold package to manage your review section for only $300 a month?"
This is a real problem everywhere.
I have the same doubts about urbanspoon.com which I no longer trust.
Exacerbated by companies like reputation.com.
The internet is proving once again to be less than it was cracked up to be.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
BAH! it's a travel agency! First world problem. It's not like buying a TV that will set your house on fire. Tourists! They suck everywhere, bunch of fucking crybabies all of them. If it was up to me, I'd put them all on a cruise ship and make them eat the tapioca, then charge them extra to use their bathrooms.
"the bread was at least two days old "
It's an old italian proverb.
If you want bread from today, you'll have to come back tomorrow.
Fake reviews can be eliminated by forcing the reviewers to post a key code along with the review.
The key codes would have been given to the reviewers by the hotel.
The hotel would have gotten the keys from Trip Advisor.
Therefore, TripAdvisor can then check if each review is legit or not. Non legit reviews would not contain the appropriate keys, and the keys would be expirable after a month.
Here in Argentina TripAdvisor has a promo where they pay for reviews with frequent flyer miles (https://www.tripadvisor.com.ar/LANPASS). You can review tourist attractions but they pay more for hotels (previously it was a condition that 1 in 4 reviews had to be of a hotel). You can win up to 1500 miles per month, which can add up to a decent amount (in less than a year it'd be a free ticket).
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
I still don't get why they haven't been busted for extortion. I mean "Give us money or we wreck the rep of your business by leaving these rotten (and probably fake) reviews up" sounds like a classic case of extortion to me. Replace ad with insurance and its so classic as to be cliche so WTF?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There was a perception (voiced to me by at least one Vineyard owner and one hotel owner) that their competitors were writing bad reviews in an effort to hurt each others businesses. Even in 2010/2011, the vineyard guy was hoping Tripadvisor would be outlawed.
We laughed and drank our wine, but this article doesn't surprise me in the least.
-- My Sig is a P228.
It also ties a review directly back to the customer in the hotel's database.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
It's North Korea making all the fake posts.
So many ways to break this... Someone mad that his morning coffee was cold could lie and say the room was dirty, the bed uncomfortable, the hotel noisy, and the food was bad. Or a restaurant could give out $10 discounts for any customer coming back with proof that they posted a 5 star review (yes I have actually seen a store offering this). All the key codes would do is assure that the review was written by someone who'd actually been there. It doesn't thwart fake reviews.
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
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!