Review Manipulation In Immigrant Businesses: Evidence From A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Immigrating to a different country presents a unique set of challenges such as cultural assimilation and learning a new language. Immigrant businesses are generally family-owned and therefore cannot invest heavily in cybersecurity. Such businesses are often victims of review fraud attacks where their profiles are bombarded with fake, negative reviews, damaging their reputation. What are the mental models of immigrant business owners around review manipulation? How do they discover it, and what are the consequences they have to face? What steps do they take to mitigate this, and how effective are they? We seek to answer these research questions through qualitative interviews with N = 24 immigrant business owners in the United States. We discover that these small businesses face review bombing attacks on various platforms like Google, Yelp, Facebook and even food delivery applications like DoorDash. Many are unaware of review bombing as an attack vector and fail to understand the phenomenon. We also find that most businesses lack the ability to handle the attacks, and reporting such reviews to the platform is not an effective method to have them removed. Based on our findings, we present a set of recommendations for platforms and policy makers to combat review manipulation and minimize its impact.