After years of pressure from local businesses and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), social media platform Facebook is now working on taking action against fake reviews left on business pages.
Facebook to Create Policy Against Fake Reviews
According to The Verge, the social media giant will be updating its Community Feedback policy in order to address this issue that has hurt a lot of local businesses.
Facebook's Community Feedback policy in the United States now states that it will ban fake and paid reviews. Users can no longer post bogus reviews for an establishment in hopes of getting compensation like a free meal.
They can no longer post glowing reviews about a product they've never used or a restaurant they've never been to.
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What are the Reviews That Will Be Taken Down?
The reviews that Meta, Facebook's parent company, will check are those that are overly positive, those that are too vague, comments that are too negative, comments that contain inappropriate or graphic content, and those that can be tagged as spam.
If a user violates these new rules, Meta will remove the review. If the user is a repeat offender, their Facebook account will be suspended or banned from the platform.
If a business is found guilty of paying people to leave positive comments on its page, it will no longer be allowed to use product tags and listings. They will also be suspended or banned from accessing any Meta features, according to Engadget.
Facebook users will see an increase in crackdowns in the next couple of months as the new policy rolls out.
UK Crackdown
In 2021, Facebook removed around 16,000 fake review groups in the UK after a watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has expressed its concerns about the growing number of fake comments and reviews on pages. However, the platform failed to catch every offender.
According to TechCrunch, the CMA has been pushing for platforms to do something about the fake reviews. The investigation started in 2018, and the watchdog pressured both Facebook and eBay to act against the fake review sellers.
The two companies promised to do more to fix the issue. Facebook, in particular, came under fire after the regulator found out that Instagram was also used for fake review trades.
This pressure forced Facebook to remove 188 groups and disable 24 user accounts in 2019. However, it is not clear how many accounts the company has banned or suspended as of 2022.
Ever since the CMA has raised the issue of fake review trading, Facebook has been repeatedly criticized for not doing enough to clean up the platform and protect the businesses that use its service.
In April 2021, the CMA revealed that Facebook had changed the systems it uses for 'identifying, removing, and preventing the trading of fake or misleading reviews" on its platform, including Instagram.
In 2021, Facebook was also called out for not tackling the issue with misinformation on its platform regarding COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates, further allowing anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists to thrive.
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Written by Sophie Webster
