Taiwan has slapped Korean electronics giant Samsung with a fine for fabricating Internet forum posts that praised the company at the expense of rivals including its home-country handset competitor HTC.
On Thursday, Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission said it was punishing Samsung with a $341,037 fine for deceiving consumers with its marketing activities.
Taiwan’s FTC began investigating the matter in April after a local site, called TaiwanSamsungLeaks, accused the company of fabricating negative user comments on competing products. To back its claims, the site released documents from a Samsung-hired marketing firm that catalogued the different postings on Taiwan’s gadget forums.
The posts included complaints about HTC’s flagship phone, and benchmarks favorably comparing Samsung handsets to those from HTC.
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