Couldn’t Amazon just remove all reviews from their site entirely? I’m sure sales would take a hit, but they could just point to the FTC rule and say “our hands are tied! No more reviews!”

I think a lot of people would continue buying lots of stuff from Amazon. They’d just have to do their product research elsewhere.

Always thought there should be a public identity system on the Internet in which your own Internet reputation is at stake like your eBay score. It could be attached to your credit score and if found out your a liar and faker (for any type of personal gain) your Internet identity and credit score takes a hit. Also, You are only able to ever get one just like you are only able to get a social security card and your score/Internet identity follows you around everywhere you go.

Just a thought to clean up all the fake crap that litters the Internet.

Now with this idea you could still post anonymously it just wouldnt hold as much weight.

That's just nopes all the way down for me. It would certainly keep me off of the web entirely (which might not be the worst thing, admittedly).

I'd much rather put up with the fake crap.

How would that keep you off the Internet? You can still post anonymously.

It'd keep me off the web, not off the internet.

If participation is optional, then why would anyone participate? To be effective, it has to be mandatory in some way, be it contractually, legally, or socially.

It might make people be more authentic and real as positive commerce fake reviews is the issue at hand. If im using my U.S. public Internet reputation ID to leave a review then it one says Im in the U.S.(not a foreigner) as ive been granted such an ID in the U.S. and two people would be more prone to be nice. While the negative comments would be in the majority anonymous I'm betting. Though anonymous comments would not hold as much weight but still been seen.

As for an incentive in time especially if a small to mid-size portion of Internet citizens are sick of all the fakeness and start using their Internet public reputation ID then it becomes a societal push.

I think such is needed even more so for all the deepfakes that may proliferate the Internet in the next few years or more. If that becomes a huge problem of really Internet citizens figuring out what is what then maybe that starts the societal push with government offering it but not ever pushing it.

no one is going to sign a legal contract so that they can review crap they bought on Amazon.

You could call it a Social credit system.

?

Amazon would be absolutely thrilled if the FTC successfully cracked down on fake reviews.

Amazon would still be in charge of enforcement, they'd just be held liable for not doing so. Which is not a pleasant place to be, because blocking automation is not an easy problem, and it's difficult to measure success.

"Amazon would still be in charge of enforcement"

Is this true? Based on my reading of the proposed rules, it would be the product owner who would be responsible, not the platform.

I don't think Amazon Basics or any of their other brands are participating in this sort of behaviour.

I could be wrong, though...

> Is this true? Based on my reading of the proposed rules, it would be the product owner who would be responsible, not the platform.

From my reading, Amazon is only responsible for whatever they knowingly participate in. If sellers and manufacturers participate in it without Amazon's knowledge, Amazon has no required enforcement.

> blocking automation is not an easy problem

Amazon is very much willing and able to tackle difficult problems, as repeatedly demonstrated throughout their history. Admittedly they prefer to choose which difficult problems they tackle, but still.

The difficulty of a problem scales in an adversarial environment.

Yes. But the problem is that Amazon themselves would be an adversary to the idea of putting in the required effort for no financial benefit to their business, not that they would be trying to stop other adversaries.

They have solved or attempted to solve plenty of problems just as hard as this one, even acknowledging that this is an adversarial environment. But they generally only choose to do so when the payoff to them is worth the effort. In other words, they can properly tackle it, but they wouldn’t want to.

They will make Amazon do the legwork.

If Amazon has to do the legwork, don't they need a system to identify what's fake to enforce if Amazon isn't doing their part?