January 10, 2023<\/p>\n
Media contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Katie Brown, katie@nclnet.org, 202-823-8442<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON DC. \u2013 The National Consumers League (NCL) this week filed comments in support of a\u00a0Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulation to ensure the reliability of user reviews. In its comments, NCL urged the FTC to prohibit user reviews from individuals who did not purchase a product or service (or are misrepresenting their experiences with a product or service) and to prohibit sellers from manipulating consumer reviews. In addition, the League advocated for the Commission to require hosts of user reviews to implement measures to protect review integrity, such as requiring purchase verification.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cConsumers frequently cite user reviews as a key factor when deciding what to buy,\u201d said John Breyault, NCL Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud. \u201cAs a result, fake endorsements steer billions of dollars each year towards certain products and away from competitors. The\u00a0impacts range from buyers receiving goods of poorer quality than expected to serious safety risks.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n NCL also encouraged the FTC to prohibit the commercial exploitation of social media engagement metrics, such as buying and selling likes, comments,\u00a0or shares. Such practices can\u00a0be used to boost fraudulent product reviews and endorsements, allowing\u00a0bad actors to\u00a0manipulate social media platforms to broaden their reach.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRight now, it is extremely easy to spend a few dollars and receive hundreds of likes, followers, or other signals that a product or service is of high quality,\u201d said Eden Iscil, NCL Public Policy Manager. \u201cBy jumpstarting a post with purchased engagement, the content has a greater chance of reaching a real audience\u2014and being believed by them. Such practices\u00a0not only affect\u00a0consumers making purchasing decisions but\u00a0can also be used to spread other types of misinformation.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The FTC initiated this regulatory process following NCL\u2019s request\u00a0for greater federal enforcement against organized user review fraud, which can be found <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n NCL\u2019s full comments to the FTC can be found here.<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n About the National Consumers League (NCL)<\/strong> The National Consumers League (NCL) this week filed comments in support of a\u00a0Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulation to ensure the reliability of user reviews. In its comments, NCL urged the FTC to prohibit user reviews from individuals who did not purchase a product or service (or are misrepresenting their experiences with a product or service) and to prohibit sellers from manipulating consumer reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[14,420,415,269,15,315],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23826"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24012,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23826\/revisions\/24012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America\u2019s pioneer consumer organization.\u00a0 Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.\u00a0 For more information, visit https:\/\/nclnet.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"