False advertising

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False advertising is an illegal business strategy where a consumer is lied to with the intention that it increases the probably that they will purchase a product.

Special cases

These cases are special in that they feature false advertising and may be indicative of a greater systemic issue without necessarily being illegal.

Resale falsification

Resale falsification occurs when a company remotely changes the functioning of a product resulting in a potential spreading of misinformation in marketplaces.

Poor self-moderation

"Poor self moderation" is the same as poor moderation except that the company itself inadequately moderates its own content, resulting in potentially incorrect or inadequate presentation of a product's information.

Retroactive resale falsification

Retroactive resale falsification occurs when a product listing suddenly contains misinformation due to changes in the product outside of the control of the seller.

A case of all three

An interesting case of a potential resale falsification occurred with the Spotify Car Thing (SCT) on a site known as "StockX". StockX creates a page for each product it receives in stock and allows anyone to sell the product anonymously by selling it to StockX, StockX then resells the product after confirming its functioning. As of January 25th, 2025 this site currently uses this description for the SCT:

The Spotify Car Thing was made available in February 2022. The release includes updated software allowing customers to see incoming calls on their mobile devices immediately. The ability to exercise control over various media-playing applications is one of the most notable features offered by the Spotify Car Thing.

The Spotify Car Thing is comparable in size to some mobile devices. They refer to it as a "smart player" on their website. The device features voice control, a touchscreen, a selection knob, a large button labeled back, four preset buttons, and one button labeled settings and mute. It is attached to the HVAC vent, CD tray, and the sticker supplied in the package.

The Spotify Car Thing was made available on February 22, 2022, at a retail price of $80.

Notably, the StockX page does not mention that the SCT had stopped working due to discontinuation bricking, the product being discontinued or bricked is not mentioned once throughout the entire product page. Unfortunately CAT does not have the ability to confirm the exact moment the page was published but we do know this:

1. The first sale of an SCT on StockX occurred 2024-09-09 at 5:54am: the Spotify car thing was quietly discontinued 13 months before in August of 2023. At this point it is still acceptable for StockX to have misinformation as it is realistic they could be completely unaware.
2. The first sale of an SCT on StockX after Spotify official announced the planned discontinuation bricking on May 5th 2024 was made 2024-05-23 at 12:47pm. After this point StockX should have edited the product description to protect consumers.
3. The first sale of an SCT on StockX after the discontinuation bricking incident truly occurred on was on 2025-01-07 at 1:47am. At this point StockX has failed to protect the consumer.