The Federal Trade Commission is apparently enacting a regulation requiring all bloggers who have been paid to review a product, to say so in a conspicuous and clear way somewhere in the text associated with their review. I’m of two minds about this, but before I get into my comments about the new regulations, I want to be perfectly clear: nothing on this site, not one review, not one comment, not one byte of information, has ever been paid for in any way. I don’t work for any of the companies about whose products I have provided opinions. I don’t work for the guys that I’ve given positive reviews, like Samsung or Company of Heroes. And I don’t work for the competitors of the guys I’ve given bad reviews, like Spore or Champions Online. I’m a consumer, who has no connections to any of the products about which I write… I’m a consumer who doesn’t like being burned, and who gets tired of being unable to find good reviews by fellow consumers about the products he has tried to buy. For example, one of the reasons I gave a long, wordy review of the Samsung HDTV that I bought last year, is because I couldn’t find many good, reliable, thorough reviews of HDTVs anywhere. Doing these little reviews is my way of providing a little bit of service to my fellow consumers out there. So again to be clear… I’ve not received any kickbacks, and I don’t work for anyone whose games or products I have reviewed. Never have.
Now about the new regulation, as I say, I am of two minds. My gut reaction, my first thought, is that this is regulation of speech, and the government ought not to be in the business of regulating bloggers. And I think that argument to some degree will hold up no matter what.
However, it is also the case that many online reviews are hard to rely on for just the reason that is making the FTC crack down: some of the people doing this are shills. I remember, again when I was looking into HDTVs, asking a friend who is really up on electronics for his advice and we were checking out websites (he from his computer, me from mine, while chatting on Yahoo! chat) for reviews. One thing he said right away: if a product has less than 100 reviews, discount the review average and most of the reviews. He said that companies pay people to log in multiple times and post lots of good reviews. Now he figured most companies don’t have people do this 100 times, but more like 10 times… so if you see something with hundreds or thousands of reviews, the bulk of those are probably honest. But if you see something with just 5 positive reviews, those are probably at least some shills, and possibly all shills.
It’s disappointing but not surprising that companies do this, and unfortunately it cuts down the value of these reviews. It’s also the case that some review sites, especially for games, are known to take money from the companies who then give them games to review. Most of these sites claim that there is no obligation to give a positive review, but… just how much can we believe that? I find it a tough pill to swallow.
And so in the interests of consumer protection, I can definitely see the FTC’s side of this. I want blogs to be as free as any other speech, but if someone has written a review on which I might base a purchasing decision, and that person is working for the company that made the product, I want to know it, so I can discount that review and look elsewhere.
My big problem is, how do we prove this? Let’s say the FTC notices all the game reviews on this site, and starts suspecting that maybe I’m one of the shills. How do I prove I’m not? That part is not clear. They say if you are being paid by someone you have to reveal it, but if you aren’t, how do you prove you are not under any obligation to reveal anything (since there’s nothing to reveal in the first place)? That part is not readily apparent from the article about this… maybe it will be cleared up in the future.
In the mean time, to reiterate — I’ve never been paid to write one sentence on this blog… I make no money from it, no compensation of any sort. I only wish I did! But alas…
