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:This

[Jorgensen]

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)

Re:This

[ls671]

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.

According to Italy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Relying on user reviews is stupid

[AK Marc]

Reviews should be hidden for A/Cs. A/C's opinion is worth less than a human's.

Devil's Advocate says...

[wonkey_monkey]

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?

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

With a disclaimer that they take no responsibility for user generated content rather than claiming its genuine. Either that or get the content up to the promised accuracy (that seems impossible though).

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[SeaFox]

Either that or get the content up to the promised accuracy (that seems impossible though).

No it's not. It's called "secret shopper", a.k.a -- the company pays for their own content by hiring a reviewer who does not tell the establishment he is there to professionally review them and instead poses as a regular customer so he gets no special treatment.

But in an ever repeating cycle, companies today want to crowdsource (get for free) the content that drives people to visit them. Low investment = low quality. Much like news outlets' quality goes down as they start using user submissions, tips and rumors from social networking, and amateur visuals because they dont' want to pay for professional journalists and cameramen.

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)

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[TheRaven64]

Does TripAdvisor have any kind of reputation system? I want to see reviews by people that have written other reviews that people have found helpful and confirmed by their own experiences in preference to reviews that someone who just created an account specifically to write a shill review wrote.

Re:Devil's Advocate says...

[rmdingler]

I read that as internet across the first skim through, and other than Strunk and White failure, I nodded in accord with the wisdom.

It's an age old racket, this rating of companies. Even the Better Business Bureau is funded by annual dues that member businesses pony up. If you fail to pay the freight for a membership, there's an implied air of suspicion when a customer checks for a rating:

This business is not BBB accredited.

Re:WTH iIs the Italian Competition Authority

[Luckyo]

Because said companies fradulently claim these reviews are legitimate.

Re:Relying on user reviews is stupid

[davester666]

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.

For crying out loud even TFA says why

[Anonymous Coward]

"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!

Re:WTH iIs the Italian Competition Authority

[Luckyo]

That's irrelevant. It's consumer protection agency's job to protect customer against misrepresentation of the service. They are performing their job here.

Re:WTH iIs the Italian Competition Authority

[fph il quozientatore]

"Because said companies fradulently claim these reviews are legitimate." *citation needed.

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!"

well, yes. Owners don't want to be on TripAdvisor.

[Mirar]

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.

Erm, yeah

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.

Re:well, yes. Owners don't want to be on TripAdvis

[jtwiegand]

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?"

Re:Relying on user reviews is stupid

[hairyfeet]

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?

Re:Relying on user reviews is stupid

[davester666]

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