by Bill Cunningham
No, it’s not replacing real lawn with one that has no daisies nor dandelions embedded.
It is the term given to the ever-growing fake reviews for products and services.
Sometimes in despair business owners write good reviews themselves to counteract fake bad reviews created by others trying to destroy the business for whatever reason.
There is too a business in creating fake reviews. An illegal trade where sellers / providers of services can pay to have their products 5 star rated. Providers of such services have even blatantly advertised their illegal services online. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) are there to protect us consumers and thankfully are onto the above.
Social media companies are striving to remove misleading reviews and reviews that encourage and promote further expansion of the fake information. Not an easy ongoing task of course for some of the culprits live far away and it’s pretty sure that some operate within government information agencies when it comes to spreading disinformation.
So, it’s buyer beware, especially if encouraged via social media articles and reviews to go spend. If we’ve received a message from a social media contact suggesting / promoting a purchase then we should simply talk to them, to be sure it really came from them.
Buying Online
When buying or selling on online market-places, let’s stick to the platform’s official chat functions as they very strongly advise. For scammers will try to move the communication we have with them to other communications platforms, missing out then the checks and security measures.