The central government has committed to develop a framework to keep track of fake reviews on ecommerce platforms. According to a statement from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) will design these frameworks.
DoCa will research the current method used by Indian ecommerce platforms, as well as best practises from around the world, in order to design the framework.
Ecommerce entities, consumer forums, law universities, lawyers, FICCI, CII, and consumer rights activists attended a meeting hosted by DoCa, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI).
Govt Committed to check fake reviews on ecommerce platforms
The meeting’s topic was the scope of phoney reviews on websites and the path forward.
Because consumers significantly rely on online reviews to make purchasing decisions, stakeholders agreed that the issue should be continuously monitored. As a result, in order to protect consumer interests, an adequate framework governing bogus reviews must be devised.
“The two main challenges here are traceability by guaranteeing the legitimacy of the reviewer and the platform’s associated liability.” Ecommerce companies must also reveal how they chose the “most relevant reviews” for display in a fair and transparent manner, Rohit Kumar Singh, DoCA’s secretary, said.
Ecommerce company stakeholders said in a recent DoCa statement that they have procedures in place to monitor fraudulent reviews. They’d be “pleased to contribute to the development of a legislative framework on the subject.”
Manisha Kapoor, ASCI’s CEO, also discussed the types of fraudulent and misleading reviews, as well as their impact on consumer interest, during the meeting.
Paid reviews, unverifiable reviews, and the lack of disclosure in the case of incentivised reviews are all important difficulties that make it difficult for customers to distinguish genuine reviews.
Singh had earlier sent a news release from the European Commission on the results of an EU-wide screening of online customer evaluations across 223 major websites in a letter to meeting participants.
