"What's Wrong with This Product?": Detection of Product Safety Issues Based on Information Consumers Share Online

With the widespread use of e-commerce, proper oversight and regulatory compliance become increasingly difficult, if not impossible, resulting in a heightened risk of harm to consumers from unsafe products. In this paper, we explore how online consumer reviews can be utilized to identify hazardous products that have previously been flagged in the European Union Safety Gate reports. Our research presents a general framework that can be beneficial for regulatory authorities, as well as a specific application to consumer electronics. We contribute a dataset of 3000 reviews of electronic products, 755 of which reference hazardous products, and conduct classification baselines, achieving an AUC of up to 80 we discuss the legal basis for annotation and potential issues that may arise. Our proposed methodology and dataset are valuable resources for regulatory authorities in the European Union and provide evidence of the effectiveness of digital surveillance in protecting consumers.