Sometimes online reviews are anything but objective, the government found.

Today we slide “online reviews” into the vast column titled, “Don’t Believe Everything You Read on the Internet.” An automobile shipment company called AmeriFreight offered discounts and other cash incentives to customers for writing glowing online reviews, says the Federal Trade Commission.  Giving people cash is an excellent way to make them say nice things about you online, whether or not you actually believe these nice things. And because the company didn’t tell us they paid for their reviews, the FTC is pretty sure we interpreted them to be unbiased words of customer satisfaction – which they were not. Now, we should really be skeptical of what we read, says the FTC, checking with other sites to back up a company’s story.