Internet Law
As previously blogged about here, following notices of proposed rulemaking in 2022 and 2023, on August 22, 2024 the Federal Trade Commission finalized a rule that will impose monetary civil penalties false and misleading consumer reviews and testimonials. Those covered by the Final Rule, including, but not limited to, advertisers, marketers, manufacturers, brands and various intermediaries, and businesses that promote and assist such entities, should consult with an experienced FTC compliance lawyer and begin to prepare for its enforcement, immediately.
What Does the FTC Final Rule Banning Fake Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Cover?
The FTC Final Rule Banning Fake Consumer Reviews and Testimonials formalizes the prohibition of various practices relating to the use of consumer reviews and testimonials and sets forth which practices may be considered unfair or deceptive pursuant to the FTC Act.
In short, the Final Rule is intended to foster fair competition and protect consumers’ purchasing decisions. In general, the Final Rule covers: (i) the purchase, sale or procuring of fake reviews or testimonials (for example and without limitation, a reviewer that does not exist, a reviewer that did not actually use or possess experience with the product or service, or a review that misrepresents actual experience); (ii) providing compensation or other incentives in exchange for reviews that express a particular sentiment; (iii) facilitating “insider” consumer reviews and testimonials that do not contain a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the relationship; (iv) utilizing websites that appear to be independent review websites when,
On September 25, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced “Operation AI Comply.” According to FTC attorneys, “some marketers can’t resist taking advantage of that by using the language of AI and technology to try to make it seem like their products or services deliver all the answers.”
As part of Operation AI Comply, the FTC announced five cases exposing allleged AI-related deception.
First, the FTC announced four settlements involving allegedly deceptive claims about AI-driven services, three of which are purported business opportunity scams that claim to use AI to help people earn more money, faster. The agency also announced a settlement involving a company that purportedly offered a generative AI tool that let people create what the FTC alleges to be fake consumer reviews.
- DoNotPay: An FTC complaint claims U.K.-based DoNotPay told people its online subscription service acts as “the world’s first robot lawyer” and an “AI lawyer” by using a chatbot to prepare “ironclad” documents for the U.S. legal system. The complaint says DoNotPay told small businesses its service could check their websites for law violations and help them avoid significant legal fees. According to the complaint, DoNotPay’s service did not live up to the hype. The FTC welcomes comments on a proposed settlement between FTC and DoNotPay, which requires DoNotPay to stop allegedly misleading people, pay $193,000, and tell certain subscribers about the case.
- Ascend Ecom: An FTC complaint filed in California alleges a group of companies and their officers used deceptive earnings claims to convince people to invest in “risk free” business opportunities supposedly powered by AI.
On July 30, 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the launch of two privacy guides on the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) website: a Business Guide to Website Privacy Controls and a Consumer Guide to Tracking on the Web.
The Business Guide is intended to help businesses better protect visitors to their websites by identifying common mistakes the OAG’s office believe businesses make when deploying tracking technologies, processes they can use to help identify and prevent issues, and guidance for ensuring they comply with New York law. The Consumer Guide is intended to assist New Yorkers by offering tips they can use to protect their privacy when browsing the web, including how to safeguard against unwanted online tracking.
The OAG issued the guides following a review that purportedly uncovered unwanted tracking on more than a dozen popular websites, collectively serving more than 75 million visitors per month.
“When New Yorkers visit websites, they deserve to have the peace of mind that they won’t be tracked without their knowledge, and won’t have their personal information sold to advertisers,” said Attorney General lawyer James. “All too often, visiting a webpage or making a simple search will result in countless ads popping up on unrelated websites and social media. When visitors opt out of tracking, businesses have an obligation to protect their visitors’ personal information, and consumers deserve to know this obligation is being fulfilled. These new guides that my team launched will help protect New Yorkers’ privacy and make websites safer places to visit.”
While many websites provide visitors with information about the tracking that takes place and controls to manage that tracking,
On August 14, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced a Final Rule combatting bogus consumer reviews and testimonials by prohibiting their sale or purchase. The Rule allows the FTC to strengthen enforcement, seek civil penalties against violators and deter AI-generated fake reviews.
“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” said FTC attorney Chair Lina M. Khan. “By strengthening the FTC’s toolkit to fight deceptive advertising, the final rule will protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive.”
The Rule announced on August 14, 2024 follows an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and a notice of proposed rulemaking announced in November 2022 and June 2023, respectively. The FTC also held an informal hearing on the proposed rule in February 2024. In response to public comments, the Commission made numerous clarifications and adjustments to its previous proposal.
What Does the FTC Final on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Prohibit?
The FTC Final Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials prohibits:
Writing, selling, or buying fake or false consumer reviews.
The Rule prohibits businesses from writing or selling consumer reviews that misrepresent they are by someone who does not exist or who did not have actual experience with the business or its products or services,
The Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice possess both overlapping and distinct authority to challenge anti-competitive practices under federal law. The FTC enforces, without limitation, the FTC Act and the Clayton Act. The DoJ enforces, without limitation, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act. The FTC also may refer evidence of criminal antitrust violations to the DoJ. Only the DoJ can obtain criminal sanctions.
The FTC primarily focuses on policing deceptive or unfair business practices, and from unfair methods of competition. The DoJ enforces a much wider range of legal regulations on behalf of the federal government. Sometimes, the federal agencies cooperate on antitrust issues. There is a clearance process to determine which federal agency will investigate and enforce a particular matter.
FTC and Department of Justice Announce Public Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing Meeting
On July 26, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Justice Department announced the first public meeting of the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing on Thursday, August 1, 2024, to discuss Strike Force enforcement actions taken to lower prices for Americans.
The meeting will include an open-press session with remarks by FTC attorney and Chair Lina M. Khan, Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer, Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division Jonathan S. Kanter, and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Brian M. Boynton. Senior officials from other agencies will then offer remarks as well.
As previously blogged about here, the Federal Communications Commission recently published the final, single-seller, one-to-one lead generator consent rule (the “Rule”). The Rule amends the definition of “prior express written consent” for purposes of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and will dramatically impact the lead generation industry.
How Does the New One-to-One, Single Seller Rule Impact Lead Generation?
When utilizing regulated technologies such as automatic telephone dialing systems (“ATDS”), artificial or prerecorded voice telephone calls, artificial intelligence voice telephone calls, outbound interactive voice response, and voicemail technology using artificial or pre-recorded voice messages, consumers will be required to select each “seller” – the ultimate provider – of a product or service from whom they want to receive telephone calls from.
Note that manual dialing may not provide cover, including insofar as telephone numbers on a do-not-call registry and various state legal regulations are concerned.
Further note that single “seller” consent does not encompass lead generators and other intermediaries, with potentially limited exception. Furthermore, it also appears that sharing consent across corporate affiliates will also be considered a Rule violation.
The cost of violating any of the Rule’s provisions are potentially devastating. Plaintiffs’ attorneys will be ready to pounce. Do not attempt to secure compliance on your own. Contact an FTC lawyer to discuss legal regulatory considerations for keeping you and your business from becoming low hanging fruit.
The effective date for the single seller provisions of the Rule is January 2025.
On June 7, 2024, the New York Attorney General announced that it applauds the passage of two legislative bills designed to protect children online and address the youth mental health in conjunction with the use of social media.
The bills, sponsored by Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblymember Nily Rozic, and advanced by Attorney General James in October 2023, are designed to protect children by prohibiting online websites from collecting and sharing their personal data and ”limiting addictive features of social media platforms that are known to harm their mental health and development. The nation-leading legislation will serve as a model for other states to follow as governments work to curb the most dangerous aspects of social media to protect children online.”
“Our children are enduring a mental health crisis, and social media is fueling the fire and profiting from the epidemic,” said Attorney General James. “The legislation my team worked on and supported along with bill sponsors Senator Gounardes and Assemblymember Rozic will help address the addictive features that have made social media so insidious and anxiety-producing. I applaud Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Heastie, and the legislative majorities for supporting this legislation and for agreeing that protecting children’s mental health must be a top priority. New York state is once again leading the nation, and I hope other states will follow suit and pass legislation to protect children and put their mental health above big tech companies’ profits.”
According the New York AG’s office,
On September 21, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has joined the Federal Communications Commission in signing a renewed memorandum of understanding (MOU) between public authorities who are members of the Unsolicited Communications Enforcement Network (UCENet). The MOU aims to promote cross-border collaboration to combat unsolicited communications, including email and text spam, scams, and illegal telemarketing.
“The FTC is committed to using all of its tools to fight robocalls and other unsolicited communications that try to prey on consumers,” said FTC attorney and Chair Lina M. Khan. “This scourge does not respect borders, and our recommitment to this MOU underscores the importance of international communication and cooperation to combat this problem.”
UCENet members agreed to renew and make evergreen the MOU, a non-binding instrument which the FTC and its partners signed in 2016.
The 2016 MOU was aimed at facilitating information sharing, capacity building, and enforcement assistance among the partners. For the past seven years, it also has facilitated communication about emerging threats and complaint trends related to spam, scams, and illegal telemarketing.
The UCENET MOU is part of the FTC’s continuing to work to fight harms that can arise from unwanted messages. According to the announcement, unsolicited communications in the form of illegal and spoofed robocalls, text messages, and emails are often the source of scams that harm millions of consumers in the United States each year. The revised MOU also has been signed by UCENet partners in Canada,
On August 22, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission announced that as a result of an FTC lawsuit, a federal court has temporarily shut down an alleged business opportunity scheme that purportedly lured consumers to invest $22 million in online stores, using alleged unfounded claims about income and profits.
The operators of Automators also claimed to use artificial intelligence to ensure success and profitability for consumers who agreed to invest with Automators, according to the agency.
In addition to offering consumers high return as “passive investors” in profitable e-stores, Automators, which previously used the names Empire and Onyx Distribution, also offered to teach consumers how to successfully set up and manage e-stores themselves using a “proven system” and the powers of artificial intelligence, according to the FTC.
“The defendants preyed on consumers looking to provide for their families with promises of high returns and the use of AI to power such returns,” said FTC attorney Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Their lies caused consumers to lose tens of thousands of dollars, with many losing their life savings. The FTC is working to hold defendants accountable and to secure redress for their victims.”
The FTC’s complaint against defendants Roman Cresto, John Cresto, and Andrew Chapman, through their companies Automators AI, Empire Ecommerce and Onyx Distribution, claims that the vast majority of defendants’ clients did not make the promised earnings or even recoup their investment. Instead, most clients allegedly lost significant amounts and Amazon and Walmart have routinely suspended or terminated the stores that defendants operated for repeated policy violations,
On August 14, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it will require Experian Consumer Services, which offers consumers access to their Experian credit information, to pay $650,000 to settle charges it sent consumers unsolicited email without offering them a way to opt out of such messages, as required under the CAN-SPAM Act.
In a complaint filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, the agency says that California-based Experian Consumer Services (ECS), also known as ConsumerInfo.com, Inc., spammed consumers with marketing offers after they signed up for an account with the company in order to manage their Experian credit report information.
In the emails, the FTC alleges that the company failed to provide clear and conspicuous notice of consumers’ ability to opt out of receiving additional marketing messages and a mechanism for doing so, in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, according to the complaint.
“Signing up for a membership doesn’t mean you’re signing up for unwanted email, especially when all you’re trying to do is freeze your credit to protect your identity,” said FTC lawyer Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “You always have the right to unsubscribe from marketing messages, and the FTC takes enforcing that right seriously.”
Consumers who wish to freeze or take other steps to manage their Experian credit information online must create an account with ECS. The complaint charges that consumers who signed up for a free membership account with ECS were then sent emails promoting Experian’s products and services such as one touting Experian Boost,
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Hinch Newman LLP’s advertising and marketing practice includes successfully resolving some of the highest-profile Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general digital advertising and telemarketing investigations and enforcement actions. The firm possesses superior knowledge and deep legal experience in the areas of advertising, marketing, lead generation, promotions, e-commerce, privacy and intellectual property law. Through these advertising and marketing law updates, Hinch Newman provides commentary, news and analysis on issues and trends concerning developments of interest to digital marketers, including FTC and state attorneys general advertising compliance, civil investigative demands (CIDs), and administrative/judicial process. This blog is sponsored by Hinch Newman LLP.