Indian e-commerce giants are flooded with fake reviews. The Government of India today announced a framework to curb fake and misleading reviews on e-commerce platforms and portals offering tours and travel services, restaurants, eateries and durable goods. The plan is to start with voluntary mitigations and move to mandatory requirements if fake reviews continue to rise. This comes more than a year after New Delhi proposed tougher e-commerce rules to limit false reviews and to deal with “widespread fraud” complaints overall.
On Monday, the government released guidelines to limit fake reviews on online platforms, effective from 25 November. Indian Standard (BIS).
Under the guidelines, platforms must either set up review managers who manage reviews using automated tools, or set them up manually to filter out bias and limit fraudulent reviews. According to the framework, the review should also include the publication date and star rating.
Consumers should not be allowed to edit reviews or use foul language. Platforms should also restrict authors who conduct fraudulent reviews from publishing such reviews in the future, the guidelines said.
Authors submitting reviews online are required to verify their identity by platform. According to the guidelines, the platform verifies the identity of consumers from email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses or using captcha systems.
In addition to online platforms, the newly released guidelines also apply to third parties conducting reviews on the web.
“All countries where e-commerce is becoming more prevalent and popular are suffering from problems. [online fake reviews]Some make the rules, some make the legal provisions. But I think we are the first country. [the] Standard and uses the standard route. We don’t want to bulldoze the industry…we want voluntary compliance first, and then, if the threat continues to grow, we may make it mandatory in the future, depending on what happens. At a press conference in Delhi.
He said the department hopes that all e-commerce entities will adopt the framework as soon as possible and be certified by BIS after adhering to the prescribed criteria. are not obliged to follow the guidelines.
“If they don’t do that and indulge in what can be termed as unfair trade practices, under the provisions of consumer protection laws dealing with unfair trade practices, or in consumer courts, penalties may be imposed. ,” he pointed out.
The guidelines are the result of a committee formed by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs in June to develop the framework. The committee included various stakeholders, including e-commerce companies, industry associations, consumer groups and legal commissioners, the ministry said.
Platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart were not immediately available to comment on the move.
“We believe that feedback mechanisms such as reviews are essential to consumer interest. Zomato’s head of public policy, Jaskiran Bedi, said in a statement emailed to TechCrunch.
Singh said Tata Sons, Amazon, Flipkart, Reliance Retail, Zepto, Blinkit, Google, Meta, Swiggy, Zomato and Meesho are part of the discussion and are trying to self-regulate fake reviews.
International bodies such as the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the US Federal Trade Commission are working to limit misleading reviews online. Despite this, fake reviews continue to appear on e-commerce websites and other platforms around the world.
Last year, Amazon avoided liability for fake reviews, but admitted that it blocked more than 200 million such questionable reviews in 2020 before they were visible to consumers. The UK’s competition watchdog also investigated Amazon and Google for false reviews on their platforms last year. In June, Meta updated its community feedback policy to limit irrelevant reviews on Facebook.
