Five paragraph essay cause and effect bassed off the article from
How Companies Deceive Us,” by Megan Griffith-Greene
Summarize
Introduce the author and article title as early as possible. Use the author’s surname only after this
Give the main idea in one, two, or three sentences.
Make sure the wording is original. Change as many of the nouns and verbs as possible. Also, change the order of ideas
Write thesis
3 body paragraphs
and closing
This
How Companies Deceive Us,” by Megan Griffith-Greene
Are you trying a new sushi spot or booking into a hotel? Do you
check online before you check it out? Millions of consumers look at online
references to “followers,” “likes,” and “shares” to try to determine if a
business is popular and legitimate before deciding to spend their money
there. But how much can you trust a company’s online reputation? The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television show Marketplace
investigated how companies artificially inflate their online credibility through
paid testimonials and fake reviews. Marketplace set up a fake food business,
and then tried to buy a good online reputation. What they discovered was
shocking. It’s easy and inexpensive to deceive consumers online.
Companies artificially inflate their online credibility through paid
testimonials and fake reviews. “I think it’s really amazing how easy it is to
purchase deception now on the Internet,” says Jeff Hancock, a professor
who researches online language and behavior at Cornell University. “You
can get fake likes, fake comments, fake reviews, fake everything.” So why
do most people fall for companies’ fake reviews and false reputation? “We
believe other people,” says Hancock. For some companies hoping to look good online, there are lots of ways they can try to boost their business. Here are four ways that companies can fake it online.
Research published in 2011 by the Harvard Business School found
that a one-star increase on the popular review site Yelp meant a 5 to
9 percent increase in revenue for independent restaurants. “If you’re an
owner of property that gets reviewed–and there is hardly anything that
isn’t reviewed now–there is real pressure to have good online reviews
because if you don’t, your business is going to be hurt,” says Hancock.
Additionally, a 2012 study from IT research analysts Garter found that
10 to 15 percent of reviews on social media are fake.
Last year, the State of New York cracked down on fake reviews in a
sting operation dubbed Operation Clean Turf. It fined nineteen businesses a
total of USD $350,000. “Consumers rely on reviews from their peers to make
daily purchasing decisions on anything from food and clothing to recreation
and sightseeing,” wrote New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman in a
news release. He described the practice as false advertising.
Some Internet marketing and online reputation management
companies bolster a business’s online image with fake testimonials on a
variety of popular review websites for a price. Other websites connect
businesses with freelancers who post fake reviews. CBC’s Marketplace,
in an investigative report, paid as little as $5 for testimonials about their
invented business.
Review sites like Yelp and Google say they do what they can to delete
fake reviews. In a statement to Marketplace, Google said that the company
takes down thousands of suspicious reviews every month, but “there is a
small subset of bad apples out there. We take verification very seriously.”
The Google representative pointed out that there is a link next to each
review “allowing users to help flag suspicious reviews.”
With more than 100 hours of video uploaded to You Tube every
minute, it can be hard for companies to compete for video views. But
Marketplace found it was easy–and inexpensive–to buy them. The show
bought 10,000 video views from a company for its video promoting its fake
business. How much were the views? They cost a mere $30.
In December 2012, You Tube stripped almost two billion fake views
from music videos that were produced by major labels including
Universal, Sony/BMG, and RCA. In February 2015, Google, which
owns YouTube, announced that it was increasing efforts to audit video
views and remove fake views from the site. Software engineer Philipp
Pfeiffenberger wrote in a blog post: “When some bad actors try to game
the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading
fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of
YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.
Last year, Italian security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De
Micheli researched fake Twitter followers. They estimated that 4 percent-
or 20 million–Twitter accounts were fake. According to the researchers,
fake Iwitter accounts have become a multimillion-dollar business.
Research by Internet security analysts at Barracuda Labs found that as of
the end of 2013, there were fifty-two sellers on eBay selling fake Twitter
followers. How much does a fake follower go for? Not a lot: the cost was
an average of $11 per 1,000 followers.
Twitter’s rules prohibit buying and selling fake followers.
“When you purchase followers, retweets and favorites, you are often purchasing
bot (fake) or hacked accounts,” the site reads. “Any account caught
participating in this behavior will be in violation of the Twitter rules and
may be suspended.”
Facebook is another platform popular for posers. The company
estimates that as many as 1.2 percent of accounts are fake. With 1.2 billion
active monthly users, that number represents as many as 14 million fake
accounts. Like many other sites, Facebook says it tries to crack down on
fakers. “Fraudulent activity is bad for everyone-including page owners,
advertisers, Facebook, and people on our platform,” wrote Facebook
site integrity engineer Matt Jones in a blog post. “We adapt our defences
constantly to stay ahead of spammers’ techniques, and one area we’ve
focused on for several years is fake likes.
Although some “likes” and “reviews” are not genuine, Hancock
says that many are honest and useful. “Most businesses really want to
provide a genuine service; most businesses are real,” he says. If a business
is desperate and buys fake reviews, it won’t last, in Hancock’s opinion. If
a business is caught cheating, it can damage its reputation. “If I had one
piece of advice, not for the consumers but for business owners, don’t do
it,” says Hancock. “It’s too easy to get caught. One of the main things with
deception on the Internet is it leaves a record.”
