The government has finalized a draft framework of standards on how to counter fake reviews and unverified star ratings on e-commerce websites, and travel and hotel bookings platforms, and is currently in consultation with e-commerce platforms for a consensus on the matter, as per reports.

Rohit Kumar Singh, secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs says, “We are working on a generic, robust framework to handle this. The main issue is traceability and legitimacy of the reviews and ratings, whether the person who’s written the review is actually the user. Hotels and travel reviews are, to use the word, the biggest defaulters on this.”

The rampant practice fake or unverified reviews make it impossible for consumers to differentiate between actual and paid reviews of products and services.

“This is the right time to address such issues because e-commerce prevalence has been increasing and more and more people are shopping online,” Singh adds.

The pandemic, especially, saw massive escalation of e-commerce. A report by Redseer Strategy Consultants said online sales (or gross merchandise value) during the festive season this year would reach $11.8 billion, a 28 percent increase over last year.

The framework has been developed by the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) over the past few months.

"The government is also looking at a clampdown on product placements in movies, which is a new way of surrogate advertising. I saw the movie Darlings on Netflix, and there were some 20 products placed there, which is a new surrogate way of advertising—this is a new challenge for us,” adds Singh.

On surrogate advertising of categories such as liquor and tobacco, the government has written to alcoholic beverage industry bodies, the CII and Ficci, and broadcasters last week, asking them not to encourage surrogate ads.

Prominent actors such as Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Amitabh Bachchan have extensively been associated with ads for products like chewing tobacco under surrogate platforms.

In the Asia Cup for example, some of these actors including Kumar and Bachchan were seen actively endorsing tobacco brands, despite both actors previously claiming that they will not promote tobacco-related products.

Singh says, “On existing guidelines on advertising for children, including clampdown on bullying, body shaming and junk food promotion, the guidelines are more in the form of deterrents, and that there’s a set of officers who are monitoring all such platforms.”