Making the best of digital anonymity

The media is full of stories about the harm caused by those on social media who abuse others, posting things they would not consider saying face-to-face, but do so protected by their digital anonymity.

So can digital anonymity ever be a good thing?

Of course it can. Anonymity allows individuals to speak honestly and frankly, without fear of repercussions, providing important feedback to organisations. Our electoral system in the UK and other democratic countries is founded on this principal. The internet has enabled the rise of customer feedback platforms, allowing customers to rate their experience of using products and services provided by businesses, and for businesses to receive honest feedback from users. This feedback is beneficial to both potential purchasers and the businesses themselves.

But over the last few years an industry has sprung up offering businesses the opportunity to purchase fake reviews that rate poor products as 'excellent'. In addition, service providers - such as pubs, hotels and restaurants - are falling victim to damaging negative reviews, purporting to be from customers but are often from rivals.

How can organisations gain the benefits of anonymity and avoid these problems?

We had to answer this question in developing our new supplier performance improvement service, zuppli, which balances the company assessment of each supplier's performance with suppliers' assessment of the company in managing its inbound supply chain.

zuppli collects supplier feedback and provides quarterly reports to the customer - with supplier scoring aggregated and feedback comments anonymised. We used anonymity to encourage 'straight-talking' by suppliers - considering their feedback would be powerful to help a company identify and address common problems. And companies know that the feedback is from their supplier base - not some random 'troll', as zuppli is a 'closed' network, only open to selected suppliers, not an 'open' network like a social media site.

So how can organizations like Amazon and TripAdvisor, who are facing this onslaught of fake reviews, address the problem?

Users want to know that they can rely on customer reviews in making purchasing decisions. These organizations can start by accepting that not all customer reviews are equal. Some are much more valid and trustworthy than others - as the reviewer is more credible. Some key criteria that could be used to determine reviewer credibility - and therefore the validity of the review are:

• Evidence of product/service acquisition - particularly to prevent fake service reviews.
• Length of time reviewer has been a user of the platform - a long-term customer is less likely to be providing a fake review than a new user.
• Physical location of the reviewer - to prevent the user of offshore based 'review farms'.

Managing anonymity for individuals and businesses will certainly occupy the attention of individuals, businesses and regulators for years to come.