Meta has announced the launch of a new customer feedback policy in the United States aimed at giving more specific guidelines regarding what’s allowed in terms of customer reviews and feedback published across Meta apps.
This new policy has been introduced in a bid to identify misleading and fraudulent reviews and ensure that published reviews are based on a real purchase experience.
Meta explained: “More than 200 million businesses connect with their customers through our apps and technologies. Community feedback provides businesses with helpful insights from their customers and helps people make trusted purchasing decisions as they discover new products.” To keep track of things, Meta has introduced new regulations which outline what is and isn’t allowed in reviews for products and businesses, such as rules against incentivization and guidelines around relevance.
Put simply, this means that businesses can’t offer gifts in return for positive reviews, and Meta will more closely monitor those looking to attack businesses with negative reviews.
Disgruntled customers are more often taking to online reviews to air frustration with little regard to if this frustration is justified. Meanwhile, positive reviews have increased in value alongside the rise in popularity of online shopping which is motivating brands to work hard to generate positive customer feedback wherever they can.
Although on the surface this is fine, businesses have been turning to essentially pay customers for good reviews, which is what Meta is looking to regulate, as well as protect businesses from unjustified attacks.
The approach Meta is taking so far is to rely on human reviewers and automated technology which will work to identify any potential violations as well as encourage users to report any suspicious reviews.