The Ministry of Consumer Affairs led by Alberto Garzón has presented a draft law with which they want to reform the General Law for the Defense of Consumers and Users and that will also be valid to transpose Directive 2019/2161 of the European Union into Spanish law, which It concerns the better enforcement and modernization of Union consumer protection rules.
The Executive has quite ambitious goals with this new text, as it wants to tackle problems as serious on the Internet as false reviews or as unknown to the public as the parameters used to show the results by search engines such as Google with regard to classifications of goods and services.
“Likewise, the reform includes controls to online search engines when they grant higher scores and valuations to goods or services with respect to those of their competitors and do not inform consumers that their positioning responds to paid advertising. With the modification, the search engines The search will have to show a description of the parameters used to establish the classification of the results. In the event that a price has been personalized for the consumer, based on automated decision-making, this fact must be reported “.
More power for the Ministry of Consumer Affairs
The first thing that the government’s statement after the Council of Ministers highlighted is that, once the law is approved, Consumption will show sanctioning jurisdiction when there is massive fraud that threatens the unity of the market and competition.
As they explain, “lThe maximum penalties, which from now on may also be imposed by the State, will go up to one million euros or eight times the illicit profit obtained, in the case of infringements committed only in Spain. “In the case of those committed in several Member States, Consumption may demand” up to 4% of the turnover of the infringing companies.
Regarding concrete measures, the ministry tosure that the law will enter into force “the prohibition for the first time of disguised advertising on social networks, until now not expressly regulated, and the publication of false or paid reviews and evaluations by the manufacturer on products for sale on the internet. “The truth is that the Law on Services of the Information Society and Electronic Commerce already regulated all this, and in fact, many influencers have been affected by complaints in this regard.
The entrepreneur must guarantee that the reviews of his website are made by users who have actually purchased the product
It is true that now that specific point will be reinforced, for, for example, Consumption warns that the entrepreneur must guarantee that the reviews of his website are made by users who have actually purchased the product. In this sense, “including reviews from consumers without verifying that they have actually purchased the good or the inclusion of false reviews” will be considered an unfair practice. This is explained in the Preliminary Draft:
“Commercial practices in which an entrepreneur provides access to consumer and user reviews of goods and services must contain information on whether or not the entrepreneur guarantees that said published reviews have been made by consumers and users who have actually used or acquired the good or service “
This has never really been the problem in cases like Amazon’s, since the company already showed notices such as “Verified Purchase”, implying that this review is from someone who has purchased the product.
The problem is that there were private agreements between sellers and users to actually buy the product in exchange for a positive review., keeping it free or with discounts. This is something very difficult to control and not even Amazon itself has been able to do it beyond expelling brands like Aukey from its platform.
The preliminary draft also includes a new section focused on avoiding the resale of tickets to shows that is carried out through bots (automated means) with which to exceed the limit of entries per user, to fight against the fact that, beyond the price, they are no longer available to the true interested parties. This is how it is collected:
“They consist of the resale of tickets for shows to consumers or users if the employer acquired them using automated means to circumvent any limit imposed on the number of tickets that each person can purchase or any other rule applicable to the purchase of tickets.”
‘Sgroogled.com’: When MICROSOFT Launched ANTI-GOOGLE Ads
Consumption and the EU want search engines to be more transparent
Consumption and the European Union (European Union Directive (2019/1150, which we will try to bring to our regulatory body with this draft) they want search engines like Google to be more open in everything that has to do with showing where the results offered come from. This is what Consumption mentions:
“With the modification, the search engines will have to show a description of the parameters used to establish the ranking of the results. In the event that a price has been personalized for the consumer, based on automated decision making, this fact must be reported “.
If in another sense Netflix indicates that it is recommending a content because you liked another one that you have seen, Google could do the same in a user panel, also reporting factors such as the loading speed of the displayed web, its security, images, user reviews, accessibility, etc.
What is asked is that the search engines show which parameters they mark that show the results that end up appearing. The controversial thing here is that, for example, Google has to show parts of its algorithm. In some guidelines offered by the European Union, however, it is explained that what the search engines have to detail are the variables that are taken into account when making the ranking, but not the algorithm itself.
From Genbeta we have contacted Google, and this is what a company spokesperson told us about it:
“We recently completed general workshops with the European Commission on the implementation of the new Consumer Law to see how we can make improvements that are good for our users and provide even more transparency.”