In another negative news story connected to but not implicating Apple, a public relations firm has agreed to settle on charges that it posed as real customers when posting user reviews at the iTunes store.
Reverb Communications, a public relations and marketing firm who provide services directly to the video game industry, have been ordered to remove a number of deceptive reviews of various games at Apple’s online iTunes store. The Californian based company have also been ordered to stop the practice immediately. Basically, Reverb failed to disclose the fact that they were hired to promote the games and received a percentage of the sales as a result.
While this story is likely to have a negative effect on Reverb Communications and its owner, Tracie Snikter, hopefully it will lead to new regulations regarding online review-based fraud. The Federal Trade Commission said last year that anyone posting endorsements online had to disclose whether they had any connections to the sellers of the products under question, although there is little way for either the FTC or consumers to know the difference between legitimate and fraudulent reviews.
FTC director of advertising practices, Mary Engle, said that “companies, including public relations firms involved in online marketing need to abide by long-held principles of truth in advertising.”. However, the online world is still a little like the wild west in terms of how these principles are enforced and regulated, no matter how long-held these principles may be.
The charges in question relate to reviews that were said to have taken place between November of 2008 and May of 2009, with the exact amount of fake user reviews and games not being disclosed. While it would be naive to think that practices like this will cease because of these charges, hopefully it will at least make people think twice before trying to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers.
