Good advice is expensive – bad advice even more: the regulation of online reviews

ABSTRACT Consumer decisions have always been influenced by others’ opinions. The era of digital platforms, however, introduced a significant change: While in the past, consumers were likely to consult their social environment and credible literature, they nowadays rely on the views of other consumers they do not personally know via online review. Consequently, reliability of the reviews is no longer safeguarded by social coercion. This paper will explore how EU law has responded to this challenge. It will argue that while EU law prohibits a wide range of actions that harm reliability of online reviews, it is evidently failing to enforce consumer law judging from the scale of persistent violations. In response, the paper will suggest measures to minimise manipulation and scarcity of online reviews by primarily reducing the accountability deficit of online platforms. These tools could serve as an impulse during the ongoing legislative process of the Digital Services Act.