Social Media and false advertising

[sterne.law@gmail.com]

Heres an intriguing question, taht I suspect may surface in due course.

A company uses Facebook as a presence (marketing?), obviously they tout their wares and people like, comment etc.
But what if, they remove NEGATIVE posts(and not obviously malicious - eg you suck). EG, a person comments that they were at restaurant and it was terrible.

The company removes these. Are they misrepresenting? False advertising?

Thoughts?

[adrianh]

The do it all the time. I had a good pow wow with ABSA a while back and they removed all of it. I would say that one can't consider it to be false advertising because they may claim that it is purely an interaction between them and a 3rd party and that interaction does not proclaim to be advertising.

[league_of_ordinary_men]

There are allot of company's who do that, but what I would say is don't take that down. Own up to it and show others you care and help that customer to resolve his/her problem. Show the customer there not just another way to make a buck but rather you care and you want to build a relationship with them. Let others see the way you resolve problems, that they do have a voice and that you a hearing them and truly want to help them. Not just make your money till the next customer comes. You have to build relationships with customers and truly care about them, one of our members needed help so we helped him till 10pm to figure out what product will suit him best.

So to answer your question, Are they misrepresenting? False advertising? you have to look at it from the point of view that facebook is a story telling platform to tell your story and intern you can use it to promote your products or services. Like adrianh said they may claim that it is purely an interaction between them and a 3rd party and that interaction does not proclaim to be advertising. So I don't think its considered false advertising, but it can be misleading and it does reflect negatively on them.

[Dave A]

I suggest there's a case for false advertising if a company put up a Facebook page, and then created and used a whole pile of fictitious profiles to like that page, and post complimentary remarks...

[Gaynor]

Interesting. It might not be false advertising, but it might be censorship. I recommend rather leaving it there and publicly responding - so that people can see you communicate and deal with things. There's nothing that I hate more than getting to an FB page and seeing the company just ignores the people commenting.

[tylerjackson81]

No i don't think so they are doing false advertising. some business competitor do these type of negative comments for their own safety.

[Mark Atkinson]

While I don't know the answer to your question, I do feel like Facebook is the ideal platform for customer feedback and that businesses should use it as such.

Negative comments will almost always exist at some point in time but if the brand can demonstrate good communication to turn a customer's bad experiences into great experiences, I think the overall perception of the brand is better off.

Having a page where both negative and positive comments are encouraged and responded to appropriately also provides motivation for those in doubt when it comes to an ethical/customer service decision. (I.e. How will this look should it go viral on Facebook?)

We don't delete comments off the pages we manage unless they are obviously malicious.