It is the first case focused solely on reviews with such a significant fine, and puts the world on notice that the FTC is finally putting a stake in the ground around abusive review practices. This ruling is significant for several reasons. Holding only negative reviews for curation has been inappropriate. If any were held back, all needed to be held back. What the FTC decided was that all reviews, positive AND negative, needed to be treated the same. Yotpo noted at the time, "while we allow a 14-day window, the FTC may require brands to moderate and make decisions about posting in a much shorter time period." In January of 2021, Yotpo alerted brands that were using their auto-publishing feature that they needed to take action on all withheld reviews or they would be automatically published. In November of 2020, the FTC investigated whether Yotpo's "star-rating and sentiment filters provided its clients with the means and instrumentalities to easily and deceptively suppress negative product reviews," resulting in potentially deceived consumers who could have believed the published reviews accurately represented all customers.Īt the time, the FTC did not recommend enforcement because Yotpo committed to implement "clear and prominent guidance to its clients on their need to promptly post reviews, including negative reviews." Using online review platform Yotpo, Fashion Nova automatically posted 4 and 5 star reviews to its website, but held back lower starred reviews for "company approval." However the company never approved or posted "the hundreds of thousands of lower-starred, more negative reviews." (This is not Fashion Nova's first brand controversy.) Yotpo Was the Platform ![]() The case is the FTC’s first involving a company’s efforts to conceal negative customer reviews." ![]() The FTC complaint alleged that Fashion Nova had "misrepresented that the product reviews on its website reflected the views of all purchasers who submitted reviews, when in fact it suppressed reviews with ratings lower than four stars out of five. Fashion Nova also agreed it will no longer suppress customer reviews. Yesterday the FTC announced that online fast-fashion retailer, Fashion Nova had agreed to pay a $4.2 million fine for selectively not publishing negative product reviews.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |