State of NY fines company $300K for fake reviews

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coffeebean

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Jan 10, 2007
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Under the settlement, Lifestyle Lift will stop publishing anonymous positive reviews about the company to Internet message boards and other Web sites, and will pay $300,000 in penalties and costs to the State of New York. The case is believed to be the first in the nation aimed at combating "astroturfing," a growing problem on the Internet.
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ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO SECURES SETTLEMENT WITH PLASTIC SURGERY FRANCHISE THAT FLOODED INTERNET WITH FALSE POSITIVE REVIEWS

WTF is "astroturfing"?

The article links to a PDF with examples of their "offenses": http://www.oag.state.ny.us/bureaus/internet_bureau/pdfs/LifestyleLiftStories.pdf
 


Cuomo is a dickhead, he should be thrown in jail for putting his political career before the citizens of new york.
 
So it was a case of mass corporate flogging. Not sure how this is different than SEO companies that are paid 100k's to control the branding and full front page results for major corporate clients. . ie. . to control the SERPs and effectively get off the front page of google resulsts like "monsanto pesticide causes cancer in schoolchildren"

this is actaully a huge and "legitimate" business and I think there is even an industry term for it.

Not really sure what these facelift guys did differently except the fact that they didn't outsource or cover their tracks.
 
The difference is that online, people look for other people's opinions, so astro turfing is the worst kind of lie... People believe the shit they read and hear on forums. Look how quickly Twitter spreads patently false information, and even after it hits mainstream news as false, there are still people that believe it. Like Jeff Goldblooms death rumour.

SERPs can be readjusted to what they should be if the lie is found out, but SEs can't actually touch sites that belong to other people. It's like the difference between writing on a board in dry erase marker, or a laundry pen.
 
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