Astroturfing as a deceptive and abusive advertising strategy on marketing platforms

Abstract

In the area of e-commerce, before the purchase process of a certain product/service, the consumer is usually informed of the characteristics of the goods and, even more so, of their evaluations by third party users. In this perspective, due to this urgency for the evaluation/commentary of a good in the market, astroturfing can become a way for the massive insertion of false or malicious comments about the supplier's own products or those of competing suppliers. Thus, the crux of the matter revolves around the dilemma between the need for innovation in vendor advertising and the deception of a tool such as astroturfing as a mass opinion-making ploy. Thus, in order to demonstrate what the legal limits are for the development of this practice, the relevant legal literature and consumer literature will be analyzed. For this purpose, the hypothetical-deductive methodological procedure will be used, through applied research, with a descriptive objective. There is no unifying provision regarding the regulation of astroturf in the current legal system, if we take into account that it is a relatively new mechanism of the market platforms. It is concluded, therefore, that such practice constitutes misleading advertising in the terms of Article 37(1) of the Consumer Protection Code, and abusive advertising in the terms of Article 36, caput, of the same Code, because it misleads the consumer and directly violates the principle of advertising identification.