11 e-commerce firms on board govt campaign to fight fake reviews

The government on Monday announced guidelines for electronic commerce platforms to fight the menace of fake reviews and ratings through automated and manual moderation that would filter out biases, fraudulent posts, and foul language, and also verify the authenticity of the reviewers.

The guidelines — slated to take effect this Friday — are for a range of e-commerce platforms   dealing in consumer goods, food delivery, and travel. Issued by the department of consumer affairs, the guidelines will initially be voluntary and made mandatory later if fake reviews continue to grow.

The framework has been formulated by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) with the help of a committee that included at least 11 e-commerce companies: Zomato, Swiggy, Reliance Retail, Tata Sons, Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit, Google, Meta, Meesho and Zepto. These companies have committed to adhere to the standards.

“India is the first country to come up with such a framework... Violation of the standards will be considered an unfair trade practice or violation of consumer rights,” Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, said at a press conference in New Delhi.

The reviewers’ identities are to be verified through email, telephone call, or SMS. The e-commerce companies will have to inform the department about the methodology to calculate overall ratings. They will ensure reviews are not edited before publication and display the date of submission of the reviews. The overall ratings are to be included in the default display, showing the average of all reviews.

Fake check

• E-com firms to develop a code of practice and necessary stipulations for terms and conditions like accessibility and criteria
• Firms to develop filtering & control tools and algorithms, verification and control processes
• Guidelines enlist methods for verification of review author through e-mail address, telephone call, or SMS

The BIS will develop a Conformity Assessment Scheme for the standards within 15 days to assess compliance.

Zomato welcomed the guidelines. "We believe feedback mechanisms such as reviews are essential for consumer interest. We are obliged to be a part of the constituted committee," said a spokesperson for the online food delivery platform.

Walmart-owned e-commerce firm Flipkart has already put in a model under which only a verified buyer can post a review of the product. SoftBank-backed e-commerce firm Meesho said it had built algorithmic models to assess the veracity of user reviews. “We look forward to working with the government to boost transparency,” said a spokesperson for Meesho.

Amazon had spoken in October about expanding its legal efforts to shut down fake review brokers, filing its first criminal complaint in Italy and its first lawsuit in Spain. These two legal proceedings, plus 10 other new lawsuits recently launched in the United States, target bad actors that operate more than 11,000 websites and social media groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews in exchange for money or free products.

Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s Vice President of Selling Partner Services, had said the company continued to improve its proactive controls, invent new technologies and machine learning to detect bad actors, and find new ways to hold them accountable.