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The Internet

TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews 88

Posted by Soulskill from the italy:-1-star,-didn't-elect-me-king dept.
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."
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TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews More

TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews

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  • Devil's Advocate says... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @04:05AM (#48665583) Homepage

    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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 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... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @04:31AM (#48665627)

        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: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "secret shopper"

          That would be a different type of site. They could do that additionally, but it costs money. Frankly I would trust these reviews less because review sites are known to strike deals with the listed businesses. I don't agree with abolishing user reviews altogether. I want to be able to tell people about my own experiences with an establishment, and I want to see personal reviews written by real people, not some faceless blurb by a professional writer. As for the fake reviews, I think one can develop some kind

          • 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: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Exactly. Anyone who uses any review site without taking the reviews with a -huge- grain of salt, isn't doing right.

            For any establishment, there are always going to be a certain number of people who are never satisfied. And there may be any number of gushing reviews that are just phoney on their face. The trick is to see where the consensus goes, while giving a bit less weight to the extremes. It also helps to double-check on the reviewers; if they have multiple reviews, see what they are saying about o

    • Re:Devil's Advocate says... (Score:5, Informative)

      by lastman71 ( 1314797 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @05:09AM (#48665709)

      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... [www.agcm.it] :

      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... (Score:5, Informative)

        by lachlan76 ( 770870 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @06:54AM (#48665923)
        Looking at the judgement [www.agcm.it], 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)

        • Not a terrible translation, you got the intent across.

          • 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: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They can do basic IP address checking, to see how many times a given address has left reviews. Many online surveys are gamed when businesses are involved. One project I worked on had over 200 fake +ve reviews coming from a single home address over a period of two eight weeks or thereabouts. Other businesses offered incentives and outright bought survey requests from their customers, then were dumb enough to complete them from their own offices on the corporate network.

      Other cases are that of the local rival

  • 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?

    • For crying out loud even TFA says why (Score:2, Interesting)

      by 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!

      • That is an argument for not allowing hotels to slap reviewers. It is a different issue.
        BTW, the Blackpool issue [bbc.com] has been resolved by the "fine" being reimbursed and the policy cancelled.

    • Pseudonymity would be enough. You don't need to know what the identity of the reviewer is, you just need to know what other reviews he or she has written and how accurate those were. Reputation needs to be linked to an identity, but there's no problem with an individual having multiple identities.
  • 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...

  • well, yes. Owners don't want to be on TripAdvisor. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mirar ( 264502 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @06:34AM (#48665887) Homepage

    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.

    • 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.

      • 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?"

  • Erm, yeah (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @06:53AM (#48665919) Journal

    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.

  • ...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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What conclusion do you draw from this? Who would have an incentive to post a nice review after closure? Sounds more like a technical problem to me.

  • Some politician's restaurant/hotel finally got the shitty reviews it deserves and we somehow got to compensate them for it.

  • GOOD! (Score:1)

    by 0xG ( 712423 )
    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.

  • 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.

    • It also ties a review directly back to the customer in the hotel's database.

    • Fake reviews can be eliminated by forcing the reviewers to post a key code along with the review.

      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

  • 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).

    ... It's OBVIOUS that unless they restrict reviews to hotels you visited (which they don't seem to do) that will att

  • 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.

  • It's North Korea making all the fake posts.

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