Alright, so New York's relevant offices get a lot of complaints of false advertising in various online forums in the form of fake reviews. Obviously this is bad for legitimate businesses in the area, because their reputation could be negatively affected to a fairly significant degree, especially if the practice is allowed to continue.
So what should they do about it? It's a matter of fraud, it just happens to take place online, and probably in more places than just yelp.com. Since it's fraud, they have an obligation to investigate and prosecute it, and a sting operation like this is probably one of the most effective means of doing so.
This is New York saying they care about their businesses, and that they're willing to take action to protect them. I mean, would you want to open a yogurt shop in New York if you knew it'd have to shut down in less than a year because of a bunch of false negative reviews online? What would be the potential economic impact of that hostile sort of environment?
They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are going to be bogus.
But suppose you open a legitimate yogurt shop in Brooklyn, and the competing yogurt shop down the street hires one of those shady Bangladeshi outfits to post a bunch of positive reviews of your business, then rats you out to the AG. The AG is going to come down on you pretty hard, and you're fined, and you're out of business. Mission accomplished.
In other words, be careful what you wish for. This is not an enforceable kind of law.
New York spends a lot of time and money on rather esoteric cases like this when there's plenty of good old fashioned street crimes they could be putting their resources into instead: muggings, gang-related activities, car theft, things that everyone living and working in NYC has to deal with every day of the year.
Yeah. The government should only look out for spoiled rich white people. There are no other people in NYC, right? Also, New York City is just that little island with the tall buildings, right?
NYC actually has an epidemic of persons unlawfully looking through the pockets of black men and I think that should be attended to before restaurant reviews.
I believe the comment refers to NYC's Stop and Frisk program[0] which has been ruled unconstitutional by a US district judge, who found that the program unfairly targets African Americans and Latinos.
That's why the AG created the fake yogurt shop. Zero difficultly in determining the fake reviews. I doubt they would take on the case of a single shop's problems.
> That's why the AG created the fake yogurt shop. Zero difficultly in determining the fake reviews.
Not exactly. It was zero difficulty in determining the SEO companies that were in the business of providing fake reviews. They didn't set up a fake yogurt shop and wait for people to post reviews and then pounce on the reviewers, they set up a fake yogurt shop, and then solicited help in dealing with "negative reviews" from SEO companies, and the help they were offered by some of these companies was in the form of creating fake positive reviews.
A number of the comments on the thread act is if the AG was targeting individual independent reviewers (whether the reviews were fake or otherwise), when in actual fact were targetting two groups of companies:
1. Businesses which were using fake reviews and/or non-disclosed compensated reviews (whether provided by compensated consumers, in-house employees, or outside companies), and
2. Businesses which were providing fake reviews for money.
Wrong, because if you were prosecuted they'd have to show that the purchase of the shill reviews came from you. If it turned out that the order was placed from an IP address connected with your competitor down the street - which it would during even a cursory investigation - then it would be your competitor that was in hot water with the law, not you.
Not if they do it in a library or any of hundreds of wifi hotspots around town. They'd have to be idiots to do something like that on their own data connection.
Also, it is usually a mistake to assume that the U.S. legal system is fair and rational. If the A.G. decides to go after you, you will be facing the fight of your life. Recall that kid who committed suicide after that Massachusetts D.A. threatened him with 35 years of imprisonment over cracking a bunch of scholarly paywalls. Not fair, not rational, not even civilized in my opinion.
You'd be amazed how many criminals are, in fact, idiots. The brainy supervillian is largely a myth. In any case, it would be up to the prosecutor to prove that you were the origin of the dodgy reviews, not up to you to prove that someone else was. If there was insufficient evidence to identify the author, then you couldn't be successfully prosecuted, and most prosecutors won't waste the resources on a case they clearly can't win.
> They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are going to be bogus.
Even that isn't necessarily the case. If someone likes the name, location, or nature of the business, as long as they don't say that they visited or had an experience there, no one can say that a positive review of even a fictional business is bogus if the reviewer has a good faith belief that the business exists. In fact it could be argued that the reviewers in this case relied upon fraudulent representations made by the investigators that the business existed and was worthy of positive reviews, and are therefore not liable. It's such a subjective issue, and that of course is why these accusations were settled far outside of a courtroom.
Please, we've been assured that this will be the first expansion of police powers into new, unfamiliar domains that doesn't have "unintended" consequences.
Who is the government to say that a particular review isn't authentic? Reviews are subjective. While it is in fact a difficult argument to say that a review for the fake business used in this entrapment operation is authentic, perhaps I love or don't love the name or location of the business, and give it a rating based upon that. Maybe I own a yogurt shop, and automatically hate all of my competitors. No one can tell me that I can't like or dislike any business for any reason, whether I have visited them or not.
There is a reason that 100% of these cases were settled....these cases would have been laughed out of a courtroom on constitutional grounds. Personally, I would have forced them to take it to court, but most businesses don't want the headache.
> Who is the government to say that a particular review isn't authentic?
The government.
> Reviews are subjective.
That doesn't mean that they aren't fraudulent in how they portray, among other things, their provenance. (It also doesn't mean they aren't false in how they portray facts; the fact that some parts of reviews, such as ratings, are subjective doesn't mean that they don't include fact claims which are objectively true or false.)
> There is a reason that these cases were settled
Yeah, because the people on the receiving side considered that their probability of winning at trial and getting off with no penalty did not outweigh the cost of trial plus (probability of a penalty being imposed) × (the likely cost of any imposed penalty).
> had a single one of these actually been brought into a courtroom, the case would have been laughed out of it on constitutional grounds.
Were that the case, that would have been a major disincentive for the targets to settle.
The cases, like many others brought by overzealous prosecutors, were settled because the state offered settlements at a discount to anticipated defense costs. As to your other arguments, depending on the content of a review, it could be fraudulent. But again, US law doesn't (yet) specify criteria upon which I must base opinions that I choose to share.
> But again, US law doesn't (yet) specify criteria upon which I must base opinions that I choose to share.
That's a non-sequitur, since neither US law nor the criteria on which opinions were based were the basis for the case. New York Law on deceptive business practices and false advertising was the basis.
If New York has a law that imposes the criteria upon which opinions shared with others must be based (I can pretty much guarantee that they don't), it will be quickly tossed out on constitutional grounds.
> If New York has a law that imposes the criteria upon which opinions shared with others must be based
...it would be completely irrelevant to this case, which isn't about criteria on which shared opinions are based. As I said the last time you raised this red herring. Its based on New York law about deceptive business practices and false advertising, not anything about third-party independent reviews and the criteria on which they are based.
Yes....you apparently didn't read my entire comment. "While it is in fact a difficult argument to say that a review for the fake business used in this entrapment operation is authentic, perhaps I love or don't love the name or location of the business, and give it a rating based upon that."
It also demonstrates SEO value but it's not representative of all SEO. That same stands for online reviews: many are worthless but some of them are not.
Did you miss the part where they didn't just arrest random people for giving ratings based on the name? They arrested people for offering to give ratings for money.
$350,000 divided by 19, that is more embarrassing to the NY Attorney General than the companies named.
On the other hand the FTC has oversight on this, and there are already existing rules in place. These companies are hardly limited in their exposure or liability from one side.
The FTC has pretty wide purview as to what it wants to do, and the powers that go with it. They can take all of your money, bar you from life from a particular industry,and if you pretend you are broke when your not put you in jail.
As far as US case law goes, yes the government can go after you for making up stuff about a commercial action.
Isn't really indicative of what happened, since the range of individual settlement amounts was from $2,500 to "just under $100,000". And, of course, the main thrust isn't the monetary settlements, its the Assurances of Discontinuance that are part of the settlement, which are themselves enforceable.
> On the other hand the FTC has oversight on this
Only when interstate commerce is involved, and even then it is by design not exclusive of state oversight or individual consumer remedies.
> and there are already existing rules in place.
This action was enforcement action under the existing rules.
- You can frequently find fraudulent positive product reviews on amazon; there is a community that writes satirical reviews for fun. I really don't like the principle that doing something for your own personal amusement is fine, but doing it for profit is illegal. (Yes, I'm aware that this principle is deeply embedded in US law. I just hate it. I also hate the similar principle of "X shall be legal if you are a good person, but illegal if you are an evil person".)
- Many, many comments in this thread (like yours!) are defending the idea of punishing false negative reviews. False negative reviews are not even mentioned in the article. Would you want to open a yogurt shop if you knew you'd have to deal with other yogurt shops getting positive reviews online?
- People seem to like thinking of false reviews as "fraud". "Fraud" doesn't mean lying. Since the people hypothetically making false statements aren't actually getting any money from the people they're making false statements to, and aren't even targeting any identifiable person, a fraud charge might be difficult to stick. (Or it might not; wire fraud is notorious for its applicability to anyone and everyone.)
- Suppose I take money to write a positive review of a yogurt shop desiring the same. I write "Of all the yogurt shops in <area>, this one is my favorite. The food is everything I expect and I have a great relationship with the people there. Highly recommended." It's intentionally misleading, in that I like them because they pay me to like them, but it is punctiliously honest. Under what grounds should that be punishable?
Wow, the comments here are a story in-and-of themselves. I have to wonder if the people questioning state involvement are not astro-turfing here as well (in defense of the companies that got snared).
To make a bad pun, it's not free speech if you have to be paid for it. The state will go after those who pay or receive money for what they say.
Very happy to see this. These companies are shameless, and there needs to be a deterrent against businesses trying to deceive consumers doing research. This has nothing to do with free speech.
> I find it very worrisome that the government views online anonymous postings on a private website as advertisement to be enforced by public agencies.
Why? I mean, in which of the cases where they were specifically treated as "advertisement" were the facts of case such that the postings should not have been viewed as an advertisement?
Why, particularly, would any of these facts make an advertisement any less an advertisement, or any less subject to any regulation that applies to advertisement generally?
1. The fact that the source is concealed ("anonymous postings")
2. The fact that it is published via a privately owned channel ("private")
3. The fact that it is published on the web ("website")
These aren't (just) spammers, though - they are people committing fraud against New York State businesses[0]. They just happen to be committing fraud on an online platform.
[0] Or rather, New York State businesses themselves committing fraud (if they are the ones writing fake positive reviews about themselves)
The reviewers at issue in this case were largely SEO companies (or their individual paid agents) acting on behalf of the businesses (real or fake) involved, or the actual companies involved (or their employees).
And false advertising (and deceptive business practices) were the actual charges.
Here's a question, based on an experience. Two scenarios:
A) A company posts fake reviews about itself, through whatever means. Consumers get a false representation of the business. The company and its associates are the bad guys, Yelp is the good guy.
B) Yelp's filters hide most positive reviews about a company, leaving only negative reviews. All reviews are legitimate. Consumers get an equally false impression of the business. Yelp is the bad guy.
Why is A) illegal and deserving of state interference, but B) is totally legal and continues today?
> Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?
It isn't. It's going into catching people violating various criminal laws against fraud. That stopping such people happens to help Yelp is a side-effect.
Because fraud means to be deceptive towards someone else for personal gain.
I guess you could argue like a racketeering effect-- who is guilty of murder, the man who pulls the trigger or the mafia boss who orders the hit? (Spoiler: both).
In fact, I'd love to see a State Attorney General use RICO to target not just a group of reviewers who are defrauding businesses, but the entire supply chain by which they get their targets and get paid for their illegal behavior.
fraud has a very specific, nine-point definition that may be more specific than what you believe it to be, for good reason too, because you don't want people going around crying "fraud, fraud, fraud" at the bat of an eyelash.
And to use RICO to go after them is really goddamn scary. RICO act specifically incurred to run-arounds on due process that were designed to go after organized crime. the expansion of that to terrorists essentially constituted the more worrisome aspects of the PATRIOT act.
Yes, and that could lead to a charge of conspiracy. The reviewers carried out the fraudulent acts. In what world do you think being paid to do something absolves you of all responsibility for your actions?
This operation seems like a complete waste of taxpayer money. While paid reviews are a violation of Yelp's TOS, since most businesses didn't add themselves to Yelp (they were added by reviewers or Yelp itself), they have not agreed to and are not subject to those TOS. Some incredibly blatant actions may qualify as fraud, but the bar for avoiding such accusations is very low. Businesses can simply ask paid reviewers not to post inauthentic reviews, and they have met their burden.
I agree. There's a difference between review one: "I tried their yogurt, and it tastes like New Jersey Shore Sand", and review two: "Go to my_shOes.cOm and get great sneakers for chEap."
One is obviously lousy to the business. The other, just SEO.
I'm of two minds about it. It doesn't seem like a solid legal argument for the state to make on a criminal-law basis -- who's to say that bogus reviews aren't "free speech?" -- and I don't see how they have standing to bring civil actions. Perhaps an attorney could comment to fill in some of the many blanks left by the NYT article?
The other side of the coin is that from the perspective of the victimized businesses, fake reviews are equivalent to any other form of organized crime. Same effect, in that the business (metaphorically) burns down if you don't pay off any of the numerous entitles laying claim to your customers' mindshare... entities among whom Yelp itself is the least shady. There's got to be some way to stop this behavior before we all live and work under the online version of the Russian mafia.
So you're saying that government shouldn't attempt to identify and prosecute those who it believes "breached laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices."
Yeah, in this case it should be Yelp's job to filter out fake reviews. Yelp should foot the bill for operations like this or for engineers to write better algorithms.
Are you saying that you'd ignore all financial incentive to protect your assets and rely on the government to protect you? We already know how well that works. It doesn't! I'm not against the AG investigating and prosecuting fraud, but I certainly don't want to set a precedent based on entrapment or put more ink on the books to grow bureaucracy.
You would have to insure your cars against theft. If you get robbed a lot, your insurance company would raise your premium.
it already works like your hypothetical scenario, so what's your point?
edit: an analogy from your point to what happened would be the government setting up a fake car rental and calling up thieves to agree to rent and steal their cars.
So you're saying we should rely on a private company for law enforcement? Presumably gun manufacturers should also be responsible for tracking down people who use their products illegally?
EDIT: I see the idiocy to which this reply was aimed as been removed.
Mmmm, yum. Delicious back-alley "underground" yoghurt. "Please, don't mind the urine smell on the way to the counter and no, of course we don't have any Botulism today."
And this right here is where the anarcho-libertarian "logic" breaks down. In reality there is no "just go underground" where "just" means "do something with trivial or non-existant transaction costs." In reality, there are a whole host of problems that come with running a food service business that's outside the purview of the health authorities. First and foremost, you're also going to be outside the purview of a lot of potential customers. And the few who can see you well enough to find you are also going to see a whole host of warning signs before they reach the point of sale. Unless you're selling something so addictive that people will risk their lives for a fix, good luck running a viable business on the few who are foolish enough to hand over their cash.
Remember, the point of regulations is not to eluiminate dangerous, fraudulemt, or otherwise undesireable conduct entierly. It's to drive up the cost to the point where the number of people doing whatever they're doing is low enough for the hazard the represent to fall below some commonly agreed-upon threshold.
Obviously, the toxic idiots who find themselves getting marginalized by effective government regulations would love to get back into the mainstream. These are not people governed by any internal moral compass. They're fundamentally sociopathic, and they'll push back in whatever way they can. One of their favorite tactics is a form of psychological warfare where they try to convince people that efforts to police them are a waste of resources since they'll never be 100% successful, so honestly, why bother at all? Gun nuts use a variation on this tactic wherein they point out that some aspect of the mass shooting du jour means that some generally sensible legislation wouldn't have stopped that particular killing. And therefore, they conclude, all legislation is pointless and doomed to failure, so again, why bother?
Rejecting the obviously absurd assertion that anything not 100% effective is 100% ineffective, it's clear that efforts to limit abusively self-serving conduct can make themselves worth the expense, even with a success rate that's well below perfect. It's not about each an every incident, after all. It's about creating conditions in which mayhem and death are statistically far less likely. Statistics 101.
So yes, there will still be problems in even the best regulated environment. But they will be fewer and further between than they would be in some lawless free-for-all that only the staunchest libertarians would see as paradise.
So what should they do about it? It's a matter of fraud, it just happens to take place online, and probably in more places than just yelp.com. Since it's fraud, they have an obligation to investigate and prosecute it, and a sting operation like this is probably one of the most effective means of doing so.
This is New York saying they care about their businesses, and that they're willing to take action to protect them. I mean, would you want to open a yogurt shop in New York if you knew it'd have to shut down in less than a year because of a bunch of false negative reviews online? What would be the potential economic impact of that hostile sort of environment?