Digital Market Surveillance: The Role of Automation in Consumer Protection Enforcement

Digital market surveillance has been growing in importance as more commerce and financial transactions are conducted online. In this context, fake reviews can have a significant impact on the digital marketplace, and it is important for consumers to be aware of their characteristics, and for consumer authorities to work together with traders for the minimization of these risks. This chapter focuses on describing fake reviews based on their factual and legal characteristics and makes an overview of computer science literature in the field of fake reviews, to highlight some of the possibilities but also limitations of fake review detection through automated means. By being able to automatically identify fake reviews (including through machine learning approaches), digital surveillance approaches reduce the problems arising out of the negative effects of these fraudulent evaluations. In implementing such approaches, consumer enforcement policy should develop ethical safeguards for digital surveillance to ensure transparency, respect for privacy, proportionality, independent oversight, and due process.