Shoppers must guard against fake customer reviews online

China has become a global leader in e-commerce because Chinese consumers have taken to online shopping like fish takes to water. What has made this miracle possible is the high internet penetration rate (77.5 percent by 2023) in China.

In the first three quarters of this year, online retail sales in China reached 10.89 trillion yuan ($1.51 trillion), up 8.6 percent year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The continuous rise in online sales revenue can be attributed to online shopping becoming increasingly mainstream in China, especially during the "Double Eleven" (Nov 11) shopping festival.

As China's biggest annual online shopping event, the festival, which this year actually started at the end of October, has been playing a vital role in further stimulating the appetite of consumers for years despite online buyers having become more rational.

Online merchants now find it difficult to sell their products to consumers who know exactly what they want. This has prompted some online merchants to choose wrong and even illegal tactics to attract consumers. One such illegal tactic is to post fake customer reviews online.

Customer reviews are supposed to help online merchants collect feedback from buyers and, based on it, improve their products and/or services. Potential buyers, in turn, read these reviews to make informed purchase decisions. Consumer reviews, therefore, are important for both buyers and sellers.

However, if a large number of fake reviews appear online, they can influence many potential consumers' judgment, prompting them to make wrong purchase decisions. Hence, fake reviews can damage the reputation of not only the sellers but also the entire online shopping platform.

For example, some businesses promise buyers a small amount of refund on their purchase if they write a positive review, preferably with photographs, or offer other benefits to lure consumers into writing "five-star" reviews despite the poor quality of their products. Worse, some online shops even hire ghostwriters to post a large number of manipulated reviews and photographs online to promote their products or services.

Last month, the Internet Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security issued a notice, asking online buyers to guard against fake customer reviews. The notice said that the police in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, has cracked down on a gang that was posting manipulated customer reviews online. This "water army", or paid internet trolls, simply needed to post prepared comments and photographs in the form of fake customer reviews without actually buying any product or service from the shopping platform in question.

Incidentally, photographs can cause more trouble than fake consumer reviews because most probably they are stolen from some other e-shops or platforms. If someone uploads a stolen photograph with a person's face, he or she can be held responsible for invasion of privacy. If the photograph only shows a person's back, the person who uploads it can be held accountable for violating the copyright law of the original photographer. And if the photograph shows the person's home decoration, for example, the person who posts it online can be held responsible for infringing on right to privacy.

Although online merchants do not post the stolen photographs themselves, they can be held responsible for false advertisement for using them. The manipulated reviews and photographs disrupt market transactions, by prompting people to buy poor quality products and lose confidence in e-shops and/or online shopping platforms.

Customers losing trust in the products and services will harm the development of the e-commerce sector, and deal a blow to online enterprises that do business in good faith.

To address this problem, the authorities should take action to deter online enterprises from indulging in such acts. Online shoppers, too, have a role to play in curbing such harmful behavior by resisting the lure of a small amount of money and sounding the alarm against those e-shops that offer them "bribes" to write fake reviews. As for online enterprises, they should abide by the law.

Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of the developments on online platforms and are prepared to do their bit to ensure the culprits receive due punishment according to law.

Also, the State Administration for Market Regulation introduced fair competition regulation, especially for the internet industry, in May, to deal with infringements of consumer rights on online platforms including fake orders and manipulated reviews.

The author is a writer with China Daily.

zhangxi@chinadaily.com.cn