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NBC Looks into Fake Hotel Reviews (Tripadvisor, etc.)

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Josh started this discussion 13 years 8 months ago

NBC Today Show looks into "shills" and fake reviews
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001923.html

[INDENT]"Faking reviews is so mainstream, hotels can hire ad agencies to do the dirty work for them. Travel writer Edward Hasbrouckk says he's seen it firsthand:

"I was at a travel conference not long ago where one of the largest advertising agencies told this audience [of travel executives] that they had an entire division in a third-world country, where labor is cheap, who were already prepared and available to post favorable reviews and say good things about whatever their client paid them to."

Posting fake reviews is illegal. The Federal Trade Commission says it's doing the best it can to police the Web, but to this day, hasn't busted anyone...."[/INDENT]

Here is more from an article that was linked to:

[INDENT]"The fakery isn’t confined to rave reviews—it also includes panning the competition. Rossen interviews the former owner of a restaurant in Costa Rica, who admits not only to posting fake positive reviews of his own place but also to posting reviews trashing his competitors. He’d write of places he’d never been: “Eat at this dive at your own risk. It was the skankiest, most disgusting place I’d ever been.”

Is posting fake reviews illegal? Most definitely. But it’s notoriously hard to catch and even harder to prosecute."[/INDENT]

Here is the segment on NBC:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/41755033%2341755033#41755033

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