[gnud]

Isn't this basically false advertising?

[Cthulhu_]

Arguably; it's not advertising the product itself (e.g. hotels). There's no rules against misreporting user or activity statistics as far as I know.

[nickjj]

It is an interesting topic.

I never worked in a brick and mortar store but I wonder if they purposely only place 1 or 2 items onto a shelf to create a false sense of scarcity. Meanwhile they have a whole pallet of them in the back. As a customer you would never know but if it came down to taking legal action, it would probably be pretty hard to prove without a doubt this was done on purpose.

Scarcity or feeling like you're going to miss out on something (especially a deal) is a really powerful trigger. I generally ignore most advertising but man when you see that there's only 2 left of something you want on an online site, I would be lying if I said it didn't affect me. Luckily this tactic is less potent now for a number of things because so many online stores sell the same items.

[asdff]

Next time you go to a restaurant notice where they seat you. Usually its in the front so the place looks crowded from the street.

[smueller1234]

See my comment further up the tree. At least some years ago when I had access to the code, it wasn't deliberately misreporting statistics.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

You're lying to make it seem more desirable; is there a difference between "20% more effective" and "20 people are looking at this"?

[tomrod]

Maybe no explicit rules, but seems to run against ethics nonetheless.

[ivanbozic]

As the other reply said – it's not, since no information regarding the actual listing is false.

So technically, it's not. But I agree with you that it should be labeled as such.