I don't think this (comments by someone for commercial reasons not being indicated as such) is legal in the UK, I can't cite the legislation on it. Pretty sure it was in the raft of business requirements that the EU bundled, one of which was business being required to provide a trading address.

Perhaps part of the eCommerce directive?

Even if you did claim every user was real, how would that be illegal? Defrauding investors is illegal. But fake users isn’t necessarily defrauding investors.

Ah, okay that makes sense. Thanks for the detailed response!

What's curious is that it's seen as a standard method of gaining traction for your website but Reddit, at least, now "strongly discourages" using alts in this manner.

> It isn't fake, it is just created by another user.

It's not "just created by another user," it's created by the owners under multiple false names meant to give the impression that it's multiple people (sock-puppeting) and that those people are not the owners (literal shilling.)

It's an obvious fraud, but the law is probably far behind. Who would sue unless there were some financial risk involved, and without financial risk who would even have standing to sue?

> Using multiple usernames on your own website is definitely legal.

I'm sure you can't say this. If I open an ecommerce site and fill it with fake reviews, I'm pretty sure I could end up in legal trouble.