After several years of deliberation, the FTC unanimously approved a finalized rule banning deceptive practices relating to consumer reviews. In addition to banning fake reviews (explicitly including those created by AI), the rule condemns censoring negative reviews and compensating third-parties for positive reviews. It’s going to be hard to distinguish positive from honest reviews, which are certainly often incentivized in the tech space.
The number of consumers likely to buy products directly from social channels increased 30% between Q1 and Q2 this year according to the quarterly survey of 1,000 consumers by Amazon seller software vendor JungleScout. Facebook is preferred by Baby Boomers, Millennials and Gen X for purchases, while Gen Z embraces TikTok. Social advertising still lags just behind search advertising in terms of influence.
In what can’t be an accident, Meta has withdrawn its misinformation-tracking tool CrowdTangle less than three months before the U.S. presidential election. Researchers and watchdogs had pleaded with Meta to keep the tool available. Meta offers its Content Library as an alternative, but access to that is restricted and pointedly excludes most news organizations.
Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks. The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems. Prices were not announced.