That may have opened the door for more enforcement action on this front, with the Amazon cases potentially acting as legal precedent for such, and as Meta looks to introduce more eCommerce and brand recommendation tools into its apps, it makes sense for it to take action now to address this element. Meta has also launched various lawsuits against companies selling Likes and followers, which is along a similar vein, but reviews haven’t been a key focus – though earlier this year, Amazon launched legal action against two companies that had allegedly acted as fake-review brokers on its platform. It’s the first time that Meta has targeted fake review sellers specifically, though it has been steadily increasing its overall legal enforcement efforts over the past few years. This is also a direct violation of Meta’s Terms , Advertising and Page Policies, as well as California law.” These actions create poor experiences for people who see these ads, deceptively influencing and misleading our community.
“ Cowan used a network of fraudulent and hired Facebook user accounts to provide fake customer reviews to artificially increase Customer Feedback Scores, drown out and minimize negative reviews, and avoid our enforcement. As a part of this work, some people receive surveys after clicking on ads to help understand whether the quality of the product they purchased met their expectations, the shipping was timely, and to learn more about their customer service experience. This survey data, along with other information, informs a business’ Customer Feedback Score.”īusinesses that receive a significant amount of negative feedback can then face enforcement measures, including ad restrictions, financial penalties or disabling accounts.Ĭustomer Feedback Solutions aimed to manipulate this process to benefit its clients. “Meta analyzes feedback on an ongoing basis to understand people’s experiences on our technologies. In the new suit, Meta says that Chad Taylor Cowan, who had been operating as ‘Customer Feedback Score Solutions’, provided fake reviews and feedback for businesses, with the intention of artificially increasing their Facebook Customer Feedback Score. Staff authors are listed here.Meta has filed a new lawsuit in California over the use of fake reviews on Facebook, targeting a specific fake review seller who it says had sought to manipulate its systems to benefit its customers. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Adding to the confusion was that Yelp used to offer advertisers the ability to promote positive reviews on their profile pages - a feature that Yelp finally killed in April 2010, just a couple months after this class action lawsuit was originally filed. (And may not be the last.) From reading numerous articles over the years, anecdotal evidence suggests that Yelp’s sales staff can be overly aggressive in courting small business owners, while also unable to explain to small business owners why certain reviews remain on their Yelp business listing and others are filtered out - not a good combination for communicating with many SMBs.
This isn’t the first time Yelp has been hit with accusations of wrongdoing. While we were confident that Yelp would ultimately prevail because we knew the allegations were false, it is helpful to have the matter resolved early so we can put these allegations behind us. In a blog post today, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman called the lawsuits “misguided” and said he’s “pleased” that the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice today, meaning it can’t be refiled.
As CNET points out, that original suit was dismissed earlier this year and the plaintiffs were given a month to refile, which they did. A judge has thrown out a class action lawsuit filed against Yelp that alleged the company tried to extort small businesses by promising to remove negative reviews in exchange for money.Īs we reported when the suit was first filed in February 2010, the plaintiffs - which included a veterinary hospital in Long Beach, California - claimed that Yelp’s sales team said it would remove a “false and defamatory review” only if the vet bought advertising at about $300 per month.
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