Centre Unveils Norms to Curb Fake Reviews on E-commerce Sites

What’s in today’s article?

• About the BIS
• News Summary

 

Why In News?

• The Central government recently unveiled the new standard - Indian Standard (IS) 19000:2022 on “Online Consumer Reviews” and ratings, which has been prepared by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).
• To combat the threat of fraudulent and deceptive product and service reviews, all e-commerce players, travel and ticketing portals and online food delivery platforms will soon be required to voluntarily reveal all paid or sponsored reviews. 

 

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS):

• It is the National Standards Body of India under Department of Consumer affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Government of India.
• Initially established as a society, the BIS was made a statutory body under the Bureau of Indian Standards Act, 2016, with its headquarters in New Delhi.
• It has 25 members drawn from Central or State Governments, industry, scientific and research institutions and consumer organisations.
  • It also works as a WTO-TBT enquiry point for India.
    • The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO-TBT) Agreement, is an international treaty (binding on all WTO members) administered by the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
• The activities of BIS:
  • Standards formulation
  • International activities
  • Product Certification
  • Hallmarking
  • Laboratory services
  • Training services - National Institute of Training for Standardisation
  • Consumer Affairs and Publicity
• Standard formulation:
  • BIS formulates Indian Standards in line with the national priorities for various sectors that have been grouped under 15 Departments.
  • Corresponding to these Departments 15 Division Councils exist.
  • The standards cover important segments of the economy and help the industry in upgrading the quality of their goods and services.

 

News Summary:

• Online reviews have greater influence on consumers mainly in three sectors - tour and travel, restaurant and eateries, and consumer durables.
• With the notification of the standard, India will be the first country in the world to have such a norm for Online Consumer Reviews.
• As per the new standard, the BIS has defined reviews as solicited and unsolicited.
  • The person responsible for handling the review in any organisation will be called the review administrator.
  • The new standard gives an option for the reviewers to withdraw their reviews
• The new standard will be applicable even for independent third-party entities that post such reviews on any online platform.
• There are websites in countries like Turkey and Moldova where there is a business of fake reviews and companies pay money and get reviews.
  • The focus of the new standard is adequate disclosure, as the online platforms have to specify the period when the reviews were collected so that consumers are not misled.
• Representatives from all major players, including Google and Meta, were part of the committee that developed the final standard, thus high compliance is to be expected, as fake reviews also harm the industry.
• Failure to comply with the BIS standard is unfair trade practice, and such entities may face legal action under the Consumer Protection Act.
• The BIS will come up with a conformity assessment scheme to certify the websites hosting such reviews. The websites will display such certification for consumers information.