(Paris) Amazon, Booking.com, Expedia, and Tripadvisor: several major platforms announced Tuesday, in a press release, that they were launching a “global coalition for trustworthy reviews”, a way to fight against fake online reviews.
“The members of the coalition will define best practices for hosting online reviews and will share methods for detecting false reviews,” promise the signatories of the text, with the aim of “protecting consumers and partners” .
If the signatory companies undertake to “respect the strictest standards of integrity”, no concrete measures are put forward in the press release, which only highlights areas of action: harmonization of the sector, sharing best practices and information on the subject.
This “coalition” is taking shape while the web giants have been in the sights of several countries for several years, who criticize them for not paying enough attention to the phenomenon of fake reviews on the internet.
In the European Union, a so-called “Omnibus” directive intended to protect consumers from false reviews was adopted in 2019. In France, the directive was transposed by an order of December 2021.
Among the measures planned, the regulations already require online commerce marketplaces to verify that the reviews published under the products offered for sale have indeed been issued by people who have purchased the product in question.
Regarding the “coalition” of online platforms, announcements could be made on December 5 and 6 in Brussels, the date on which its members will meet at the second conference on fake reviews, organized by Amazon, the press release specifies.