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.

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...

[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: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: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