Why is this book necessary you ask? Because we have seen everything from fake reviews online, to overzealous tweets and posts that cross into unethical territory, to people at businesses and organizations not knowing they are even required by the Federal Trade Commission to disclose relationships with employers when posting about their products or services. I am still shocked that nearly every business I visit, whether for-profit, nonprofit, higher education or faith based, does not know that they are required to have a social media policy and train their employees in social media ethics.
Over the last few years, I have been gathering examples that demonstrate how not to use social media; many of these happen to come from the world of marketing. I show these in my university classes to help set the stage for a more thorough understanding why a social media ethics policy is needed.
These examples are not meant to speak negatively about brands or businesses, but rather to reinforce some key points:
1. The need for social media ethics policies by all businesses and organizations
2. The need for social media ethics training by all businesses, for-profit, nonprofit, higher education, and faith based
Why are policies and training needed? So each business and organization can establish rules or guidelines for social media use by employees, volunteers, board members, vendors, and others.
Even with social media policies and Federal Trade Commission guidelines, we have seen businesses and organizations do stupid things.
“With around a fifth of the world’s population on Facebook and some 20 million people joining Twitter every month, social media has provided a new battleground for brands vying for our affection, our advocacy and our money. Unfortunately, this mentality has led to some businesses intentionally overstepping the mark in order to garner competitive advantage. The worst offenders will use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, for example, to hide negative results; will delete negative reviews, posts and comments; create fake accounts and post positive reviews; pay for ‘likes’ and fans on Facebook; or leverage ‘click farms’.” (Brown 2014)
In 2009 “It was revealed that consumer products manufacturer Belkin was exposed for paying people to leave positive reviews on their products via Amazon. The recent Brit Awards also saw social media controversy as journalists were invited to attend on the condition that they shared pre-determined tweets about the sponsor MasterCard.” (Brown 2014)
Paying for Followers May Cost You a Job
If you are reading this, looking for a job, and think you will impress a hiring manager by having an impressive number of followers on LinkedIn and Twitter, think again how you go about it.
Chereen Zaki tells an interesting story with lessons to be learned. As the story goes, her husband was discussing a potential job with her that required him to have a high number of Twitter followers.
In her research she discovered that anyone could “buy” up to 1,000 new Twitter followers in packages for as little as $20. The problem is that it is unethical and you can get caught.
“Employers can now weed out the imposters on Twitter using applications such as Statuspeople.com’s Fakers application, or Social Baker’s Fake Followers application. These applications allow you to measure your own, as well as other’s fake, inactive, and good followers on Twitter. If your faker number runs under 20-percent, you tend to be on the safe side. On TwitterCounter.com, there is the option to enter the name and receive a three-month view of the follower count. If there are irregular significant jumps, then all signs point to fake.” (Zaki 2013)
While there is still no sure way to find out if you bought Facebook friends or Instagram followers, there are a few signs that employers look for:
Those in the medical and health care community have not been immune from social media ethics challenges.
According to an article in scrubsmag.com (Fink 2010), five nurses, who worked at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, CA, lost their jobs because of Facebook posts, although the CEO of Tri-City Medical Center said no patient names, photos, or identifying information were included in the posts.
“In 2009, Wisconsin nurses were fired after two nurses took photos of a patient’s X-ray and allegedly posted it to Facebook. While the Facebook page was quickly removed, one of the nurses in question admitted to discussing the incident on her Facebook page.” (Fink 2010)
The questions remain as follows:
1. Should health care professionals be permitted to discuss patient care online?
2. Should health care professionals be permitted to show patient pictures?
Singapore Airlines stepped into the fray after posting what some considered to be unethical and insensitive posts about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board. “Right after the crash of MH17, Singapore took to Twitter and Facebook claiming that their planes do not fly across the Ukrainian airspace. The posts received hundreds of scathing comments in social media, from people saying that they were “unethical.”” (Sison 2014)
Big brands in the United States have also found themselves embroiled in social media ethics controversies, including major designer and retailer Kenneth Cole. A tweet went out in 2013 that attempted to tie into war-torn Syria. The point here is how could such a respectable brand believe that a marketing pitch tied to “boots on the ground” would be acceptable? (Broderick 2013)
Source: Broderick, R. 2013. “Kenneth Cole Decided to Tweet Something Completely Stupid About Syria.” Retrieved from http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/kenneth-cole-decided-to-tweet-something-completely
“An example of a questionably unethical social media practice would be after the Boston Marathon Bombing when NBC Bay Area posted a photo of a bombing victim and asked people to “Like” the photo to wish him a speedy recovery. This was an attempt to manipulate people’s feelings for a young victim of the bombing in order to receive an edge in the social media rankings over other networks (Ray 2013).” (mediaethicsafternoon.wordpress.com 2014)
Businesses and organizations simply need to “think before they tweet.” It’s a matter of sensitivity.
As you may recall, on July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside of a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. A gunman shot into the audience with multiple firearms, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.
Shortly after the National Rifle Association (NRA) broadcast a tweet that was met with a substantial backlash in Colorado reading, “Good morning, shooters: Happy Friday! Weekend plans?” (Fitzpatrick 2012)
Source: Fitzpatrick, A. 2012. “NRA Tweet.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/07/20/nra-tweet/
The backlash was quick and vocal:
Source: Fitzpatrick, A. 2012. “NRA Tweet.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/07/20/nra-tweet/
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy went on record as the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history, causing damage estimated at over $68 billion. What did The Gap do on Twitter? The company sent out this tweet: “All impacted by #Sandy, stay safe! We’ll be doing lots of Gap.com shopping today. How about you?” (Wasserman 2012)
Source: Wasserman, T. 2012. “Gap Criticized for Insensitive Tweet During Hurricane Sandy.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/10/31/gap-tweet-hurricane-sandy/
Once again, there was a strong consumer backlash:
Source: Wasserman, T. 2012. “Gap Criticized for Insensitive Tweet During Hurricane Sandy.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/10/31/gap-tweet-hurricane-sandy/
Fake Reviews
The issue of fake reviews has also plagued Yelp and other sources. In fact, some businesses have been caught offering to pay for fake reviews (which is illegal) (Pinkham 2014).
Source: Pinkham, C.A. 2014. “Oh Look, a Company Is Paying People to Post Fake Yelp Reviews.” Retrieved from http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/oh-look-a-company-is-paying-people-to-post-fake-yelp-r-1641909713
http://marketingland.com/yelp-sues-to-take-down-paid-review-mill-49953
What drives this unethical behavior? As we will see later in this chapter, money.
Is It a “Review” or an Advertisement?
The problem goes much deeper than fake reviews or unethical tweets.
When you read a product or service review, or see someone’s social media post extolling the virtues of a restaurant or product, you want that to come from someone who has purchased and used the product or service, not someone who is “hired” or paid with some other form of compensation to say nice things about the business. That is great in an ideal world, but we do not live in an ideal world, which is why the Federal Trade Commission has issued important “guidelines” to all businesses, why prosecutors in some states have fined businesses for fake reviews, and why journalists have exposed some businesses for hiring people to post fake reviews.
A “testimonial,” or a consumer review, must be from someone who has used the product or service, and/or believes in the brand or the cause, and writes honestly about it; otherwise, it’s an “advertisement.” This means online reviews must be based on real experiences with the product, service, or venue. If you write a fake review, encourage a fake review, or compensate anyone for a fake review, you are liable under Federal Trade Commission rules.
Reviews vs. Advertising
Typically, in business, advertising is “paid,” which means that a business has usually provided some sort of compensation to either the person/group making the claim and providing the space for the claim (TV, Print, Radio, Internet, Social Media). An advertisement is usually a marketing message designed to persuade consumers to take action, whether it is to buy a product, use a service, vote for a political candidate or issue, and so on.
Now there is a category in which some people receive a form of “compensation: such as free concert tickets, free clothing or cosmetics for bloggers, products to test, free books to review, computers or electronics to review, cars to test drive, and so on.” The Federal Trade Commission has said a business or organization can engage in these practices as long as the person receiving the goods discloses that clearly and conspicuously in their posts. In these cases, we need to know the reviewer has received the product for free to use and/or keep, and what they thought of it. If they do not reveal they have received some sort of compensation, we are left believing they love the product or service without the context that they were “paid” and it is not a true “testimonial.”
We both can live with the fact that some expert electronics and computer journalists are given or allowed to test new computers and software, but we need to know that up front; the same holds true if we see a glowing review for a new car. But what if you see a great review for a book or a film? Does it make a difference whether the person works at the theater and saw the film for free, or was given the book for free? The answer is yes, and it should. You and I both need to know whether this was a genuine, unsolicited testimonial review, or prompted by the delivery of a free product or service. Then we have the context to make an educated decision.
In 2013, New York regulators announced a major crackdown on deceptive Internet reviews. According to the New York Times, the yearlong investigation fined 19 businesses for misleading practices and ordered them to pay of $350,000 in penalties.” (Streitfeld 2013)
These fake reviews can damage lives. “The investigation uncovered a wide range of services buying fake reviews that could do more permanent damage: dentists, lawyers, even an ultrasound clinic.” (Streitfeld 2013)
“Among those were a charter bus operator, a teeth-whitening service, and a laser hair-removal chain. There were also several reputation-enhancement firms that place fraudulent reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, Citysearch, and Yahoo.” (Streitfeld 2013)
The challenge is that for many people, when you read a review on sites like Yelp, Yahoo, Google, and Citysearch, you think you are reading an authentic testimonial review—when it’s not, that’s deception.
Why Fake Reviews?
Why? Money and consumer eyeballs. Seventy-one percent of people read consumer reviews before making a purchase, according to a study conducted by Bazaarvoice, a company that helps companies and brands with authentic consumer-generated content. The study also found that seven out of 10 U.S. consumers have questioned the trustworthiness of reviews across the web (Miller 2015).
How does this happen? In some cases, friends of business owners do it, while in other cases, people are hired by businesses to write fake reviews.
Why do they do it? It means business. Money.
As I mentioned earlier in this book, reviews, testimonials, and word of mouth recommendations have become more trusted than traditional advertising.
“Eight-five-percent of fans of brands on Facebook recommend brands to others.” (syncapse.com 2013)
“Seventy-two-percent say reading a positive customer review increases their trust in the business; it takes reading between 2-6 reviews to get 56-percent of them to this point.” (BrightLocal.com 2014)
“Studies show even the smallest push for fake positive reviews makes a huge difference in restaurant success. According to a University of California, Berkeley study, a slight half-star improvement increases the number of dinner reservations at an eatery.” (Pan 2012)
“Third-party businesses are getting rich busting out five-star reviews. Entrepreneurs offer to write positive restaurant reviews on help-for-hire sites like Fiverr and online forum Digital Point, according to The New York Times.” (Pan 2012)
What’s A Star Worth?
A study by Harvard Business School assistant professor Michael Luca concluded that “. . . a positive evaluation on Yelp.com does, in fact, appear to lead to increased business for restaurants. “Reviews, Reputation and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com,” analyzes review data from both Yelp and all Seattle restaurants from 2003 to 2009, and draws three conclusions about the Yelp effect on restaurants:”
1. A one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a 5 to 9 percent increase in revenue.
2. This effect is driven by independent restaurants; ratings do not affect restaurants with chain affiliation.
3. Chain restaurants have declined in market share as Yelp penetration has increased. (Harvardmagazine.com 2011)
The Problem is Growing
By now, you must be thinking this is still a small problem: Not so.
“A 2012 Gartner study estimated that one in seven recommendations or ratings on social media sites like Facebook would soon be fake. And there have been instances where all the reviews of a product have been secretly bought and paid for by the seller of the product.” (Streitfeld 2013)
Gartner Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, predicted that by the start of 2015, 10 to 15 percent of social media reviews would be fakes, paid for by businesses. (gartner.com 2012)
According to Review Trackers, 21percent of Americans have written a review for a product or service they never used. “The fake review problem exists in the first place because the marketing potential of reviews is just huge,” says Chris Campbell, chief executive and founder of Review Trackers, a service that helps businesses aggregate and manage online reviews . “Business owners have thus seen it fit to try and game the system, and they pay hired review writers to pose as happy customers in order to improve their business reputation.” (Fuscaldo 2014)
“With over half of the Internet’s population on social networks, organizations are scrambling for new ways to build bigger follower bases, generate more hits on videos, garner more positive reviews than their competitors and solicit ‘likes’ on their Facebook pages,” said Jenny Sussin, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Many marketers have turned to paying for positive reviews with cash, coupons and promotions including additional hits on YouTube videos in order to pique site visitors’ interests in the hope of increasing sales, customer loyalty and customer advocacy through social media ‘word of mouth’ campaigns.” (gartner.com 2012)
“Organizations engaging in social media can help to promote trust by openly embracing both positive and negative reviews and leveraging negative reviews as a way to encourage customers with positive product or service experiences to share them on review sites as well,” Ms. Sussin said. “They should also respond to ratings and reviews in an official capacity to demonstrate willingness to engage in productive conversation with anyone.” (gartner.com 2012)
Amazon.com Cracks Down
In October 2015, Amazon sued more than 1,000 sellers of phony product reviews, for misleading Amazon’s customers “by selling” fake reviews of products.” This came after Amazon sued several websites earlier in 2015 for selling false reviews. (Miller 2015) The lawsuit targeted account holders on Fiverr.com, a marketplace for odd-jobs where work opportunities are sold for $5 and up.” (Wattles 2015)
Can Fake Reviews Lead to Skepticism by Consumers?
The answer may well be yes. Fake reviews and testimonials may be backfiring in more ways than one. They may lead to a loss of trust by the public, and this would be tragic.
“A survey about attitudes to online marketing techniques, such as fake Facebook ‘likes’, tweets about brands, and hiding negative reviews from search engine results, suggests that marketers are a lot more relaxed about such practices than the public.” (Gallivan 2014)
“The survey, conducted among 3,000 consumers and 1,000 marketers in the U.K. by pollster YouGov PLC for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, found that 67-percent of consumers think techniques to hide negative content within search results are unethical, against just 38-percent of marketers.” And consumers are also more scathing about companies giving products away to encourage positive reviews online, with only 48-percent thinking the practice is acceptable, compared with 66-percent of marketers.” (blogs.wsj.com 2014)
Can Consumers Trust Online Reviews?
The logical question is whether you can trust consumer reviews? The answer is “Yes But..” yes, but read carefully and be mindful of the source. For instance, if you are reading reviews for a relatively new restaurant, your “review red flags” should go up when you see all five stars the first week for a restaurant that has only been open for two weeks.
Whether it is a restaurant or hotel, there are real consumers and honest business operators, and then there are the, well, unscrupulous.
“Researchers at Yale, Dartmouth, and USC found evidence that hotel owners post fake reviews to boost their ratings on the site—and might even be posting negative reviews of nearby competitors.” (Fisman 2012)
“One widely reported study showed that a text-analysis algorithm proved remarkably adept at detecting made-up reviews. The researchers instructed freelance writers to put themselves in the role of a hotel marketer who has been tasked by his boss with writing a fake customer review that is flattering to the hotel. They also compiled a set of comparison TripAdvisor reviews that the study’s authors felt were likely to be genuine. Human judges could not distinguish between the real ones and the fakes. But the algorithm correctly identified the reviews as real or phony with 90-percent accuracy by picking up on subtle differences, like whether the review described specific aspects of the hotel room layout (the real ones do) or mentioned matters that were unrelated to the hotel itself, like whether the reviewer was there on vacation or business (a marker of fakes). Great, but in the cat-and-mouse game of fraud vs. fraud detection, phony reviewers can now design feedback that won’t set off any alarm bells.” (Fisman 2012)
Dine and Duped!
This is a phrased I coined after I fell victim (like many of you) to some wonderful reviews about a restaurant. “Oh, the food is so wonderful.” “The atmosphere is great.” You get so much food.” The reviews went on and on. What did I find? A $9 Caesar salad with a wedge of lettuce so small I needed a microscope to see it; two bites and the salad is history! I thought to myself, so much for those, uh, “fake” reviews.
How Do You Spot a Fake Review?
This is a question I have not only asked myself as I read reviews, but one I have been asked hundreds of times.
In 2014, Mashable.com published a very helpful story that included several tips to help all of us look for “clues” about the reliability of reviews:
1. The reviewer has not reviewed anything else. Some consumers may like or hate a particular product or service so much that they feel compelled to write a single online review. However, one extremely positive or negative comment by a reviewer who has never reviewed anything else could be a red flag. Make sure to note the username and click to see his or her history.
2. The reviewer posts multiple reviews with similar language. If one reviewer has commented on multiple hotel listings with reviews that all sound eerily similar to one another, your instincts should be on high alert. This could be a clear sign of someone who is getting paid per review (and is being pretty lazy about hiding it).
3. The reviewer’s language is oddly specific. Let us say you are reading a review for a product that has a really long name, like the “DEFG HydraHelix Smartwatch 2000x Chrome.” Most reviewers are not going to write out the whole name multiple times, and will instead shorten it to something like the “HydraHelix.” Fake reviewers will go all out, stating the full name as often as possible, because it juices up SEO points for the product.
4. Too Much Enthusiasm! If there is a lot of excessive punctuation and overly positive language, put on your skeptical specs.
5. A hotel review that focuses too much on family and activities. A 2013 study by Cornell University found that fake hotel reviewers would often emphasize all the great activities and family fun the place provides, whereas real reviewers focused mostly on the hotel itself. It is a ploy to make a review sound as personal and relatable as possible. Plus, it is a way for the reviewer, who is likely never stepped foot in that hotel, to avoid writing details about the hotel itself.
To combat fake reviews, here are some nearly foolproof ways to determine if a comment is legitimate:
• Verified reviews: Some sites have a means of verifying reviewers. For example, Amazon marks whether or not a reviewer actually purchased a reviewed item from the online store.
• Social media accounts: Some sites require reviewers to post comments by using their Facebook account. Thus, it puts a face to the comment. You can always click on that person’s account and check out the profile to see how “real” he or she is.
• If you’re hunting for hotels, try Review Skeptic, a beta site based on research from Cornell University. Copy and paste reviews onto the site’s homepage and it will let you know if they are real or fake, based on language analysis. (Desta 2014)
FOX Business reporter Donna Fuscaldo also provides some advice in her 2014 article about how to spot the “fakes” from the real reviews:
Fraud Alert No. 1: Too Good to Be True: Nobody is perfect, and a company, product, or service with nothing but five-star reviews should cause consumers to pause. “If all you see is five stars, you got to start suspecting these guys work for the manufacturer,” says Udi Ledergor, chief executive of online review company Yotpo. “Even when you are happy with a product there are usually some negatives.”
Fraud Alert No. 2: Product Feature Reviews: Emotion is a main part of the buying process, which means it should also show up in reviews. According to Campbell, real reviewers will talk about the value and performance of the product or service instead of solely focusing on the features. What’s more, he says real review writers typically include information about how they used the product and how it worked. Reviews that only list the features with no emotion or interaction with it tend to be fake, he says.
Fraud Alert No. 3: Language in Review is Exact and Not Every Day: Authors of fake reviews want their review to show up high in search results, which is why they will make a point of using the exact product name and model numerous times through a review. They also tend to use words the average person would not, such as “explosive speed” or “revolutionary cutting-edge technology,” says Campbell. “No one talks like that, so it’s reasonable to expect the review to be fake,” he says.
Fraud Alert No. 4: Too Polished Pictures: They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and when it comes to the legitimacy of a review, an overly-polished image or one that is found all over the Internet could signal a counterfeit review.
“Consumers often focus on the review text, but accompanying photos and videos can also reveal which reviews could be fake,” says Campbell. “If the pictures look too professional, or if a Google image search produces results for the same photos in various review sites, then it’s more likely that the review is fake.” (Fuscaldo 2014)
Summary
In this chapter, we learned about poor social media ethics examples. We also learned why businesses hire people to submit fake reviews, how the problem is growing, what some companies are doing to stop fake reviews, and how to spot a fake review.