I sometimes find myself telling my kids -- “Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.” Thankfully, right and legal do sometimes overlap. Over the weekend the New York Times Ethicist opined on a question about a company that creates iPhone apps and asks its employees to download the app and give it a five star rating. The ethicist objected on several grounds, including reviewing an app that you might have never used, conflict of interest and pressuring employees to do something outside the scope of their employment and about which they might have moral objections.
He might have added a fifth objection - violation of the FTC’s endorsement guides. Not only is the endorsement likely false in some instances, it also appears that the employees are not properly disclosing their affiliation with the app developer in their reviews. This does point out an interesting question, though, concerning the FTC’s revised guides. Many customers may only look at how many stars an app or other product receives from users and not necessarily look at all the individual reviews. So, if an employee properly discloses his or her affiliation with the company in the review but goes ahead and gives the product 5 stars, many potential customers may never even realize the extent to which the “star” rating is based on reviews by employees of the manufacturer. Maybe somebody can develop an app to figure all that out.
