Taiwan To Fine Bloggers Who Make False Claims About Products
Taiwan To Fine Bloggers Who Make False Claims About Products
Posted 11/08/2011 at 11:28am
| by Brad Chacos
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When it comes to the Internet, sifting through the crap to find the gems can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing – especially if you’re looking for unbiased opinions on retail products. Unscrupulous advertisers have been paying web workers nickels for whipping up false user reviews at shopping sites for a while now, and apparently, bloggers making false claims about products have become an epidemic in Taiwan. The country’s law makers are sick of it, and today they introduced a law that levies steep fines against bloggers and other reviewers that exaggerate the awesomeness of not-so-awesome products.
Consumer disputes have been skyrocketing in Taiwan, the AFP reports; while a lot of the suits come from business owners who disagree with negative reviews posted by customers on websites, consumers have also been complaining about the number of falsely glowing assessments found online. The new fines – which are part of a revised trade law – allow regulators to fine reviewers who post false claims online up to ten times the amount they were paid to sponsor the product. That could add up to a pretty penny, too – the report says that some bloggers are paid in excess of $2,000 USD for a single fake review.
Obviously, this doesn’t affect American Web users – or American paid-for-reviews bloggers, for that matter – but what do you folks think of the law? Is it needed intervention or unwanted governmental intervention? Should it apply to bloggers and websites that talk up a product to generate AdSense or affiliate clicks, too?
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pitashen
November 08, 2011 at 1:35pm
Some Background
OP, here is some background that I know of about the blogger culture and the product reviews they are involved with. Hopefully u'll get a understanding of the possible scale of the matter and why it may be neccessary for taiwan government to impose laws to regulate.
Basically, the blogger culture in Taiwan serves much more like a social network than the west that I am aware of. Espcially when facebook had not yet taken off in Taiwan. Basically they got these blog portals, which help blogger be connected among other bloggers. The portal would provide headlines of popular bloggers' postings such as their thoughts on food, clothings, best places for vacations, the cosmetic products or photo alums (if they are cute/hot) . etc etc.
Those blogs started off as just like any of blogs out there we see, with people just sharing their daily life events, thoughts, news, and showing off the new stuff they bought (hence product reviews) etc without the intention of profiting from it. It is not hard to imagine that you whould get some bloggers who are very materalistic and would spend a lot of money buying stuff, and share their view on their blogs. Then you start to have some bloggers increasingly becoming very popular (mostly girls) creating royal fan bases. Some even got popular enough that they would be invited to appear on TV shows (again mostly girls).
As those bloggers provided more and more reviews of products that they bought and tried (mostly fashion items and cosmetics) to their royal fan bases, who would almost believe everthing the bloggers have to say about their experience of the products, companies started to take advantages of that. And the rest is not hard to imagine. When money is involved, shit happens.
praack
November 09, 2011 at 10:48am
nice summary - this really does help
since reviews in the west are normally site based at the retailer or in the forum - there is less emphasis on going to a Blog. (hmm would max pc count as a blog i wonder?).
could be why we see less of it here
Typo91
November 08, 2011 at 11:46am
one simple rule.
I dont trust any site alone. I prefer "matter of fact" numbers on products, with clear explainations of how tests where carried out.
Anytime I see a review that says "This is great!" I think its a paid review. Maybe I am a grumpy old man, but I mainly only go back and review something if I have a problem.
Kinda like torrents. If I see 2000 purchases, and 3 reviews where it says "I can't get it to work" chances are its so awesome, everyone is too busy enjoying the product to come back and help the noobs or make negitive comments
2000 purchases and 250 "This causes X error and I had to ABC to fix, or RMA" and 500 "hey this is perfect just works great" thats a bad sign
5 purchases and 50 reviews "OMG this completes me" is really a red flag
Rule of thumb, Google "%product name% problem" or "%product name% rma" will normaly find all the dirty secrets about something.
This habbit will pretty much make you never want to buy anything too.
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