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Amazon's Fake Review Problem

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Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#91

Post by icebraining »

jacek wrote: post #39

The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are my two anecdotes: 1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough…

Frankly, those don't bother me because nobody will write a decent review just because they were prodded a bit. It makes the average useless, of course, but you can still read them.

Paid reviews from professionals are more dangerous. I just have to hope the companies' greed prevents them from paying enough for a good review.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#92

Post by coredog64 »

pwaai wrote: post #51
mjevans wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the behavior that I would like to see Amazon encourage as a solution. Tracking the product back to it's actual origin of manufacturer (and showing us the consumer). Where, exactly, was the factory? The lot number and date of manufacturer? Official model and revision number? Requiring these things will give buyers better hard data to detect and exclude middle-level-marking shenanigans as well as combat 'bait an…

How would you go about tracing the steps? Are there some large database of OEM factories where you can contact them in English (assuming China). I too would love to know exactly where and who made it, how many middle-men have stepped in with their own markup to finally Amazon. Because it's clear that Amazon doesn't give two shit about who and what gets sold, they just care about volume. Fixing reviews is not part of…

Wouldn't this be a classic use case for block chain technology?

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#93

Post by threatofrain »

Someone1234 wrote: post #77
miles_matthias wrote: post #62

Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F grade because people were "suspiciously positive". Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake. In her case, she knows these people personally and th…

> my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. So your wife has people she knows leave positive reviews in order to bump her book's review score and you're upset that Fakespot gave it an F due to them being non-organic reviews? As a consumer it sounds like Fakespot is doing a great job, and exactly what it states on the tin. What your wife is doing is at best dishonest…

I would also call this dishonesty, but I wouldn't be too hard on someone for this. Asking someone to not do this is like asking someone to do honest advertisements. It's asking someone to uphold an ethical standard that the majority neglects.

A little bit of moderated moral pushback has its place, but I think the main solution at societal-scale must be structural.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#94

Post by alexbeloi »

miles_matthias wrote: post #62

Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F grade because people were "suspiciously positive". Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake. In her case, she knows these people personally and th…

Do you actually think reviews from friends are objective and not grossly positively skewed?

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#95

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

It's not perfect, but I've been using Fakespot [0] for all my Amazon purchases. It helps filter down the info a bit, which makes it easier to make decisions.

Honestly, I think what we need is a Consumer Report reboot. I signed up for a subscription recently, and was very disappointed with their service, although I still like idea behind it.

I'm often overwhelmed by the huge number of options, and it can be incredibly challenging to narrow the number down, even for everyday purchases. Heck, sometimes you have two options and no easy way of differentiating between em, like with generic vs brand over-the-counter medicine. Unfortunately, now-a-days trying to do any kind of research is most likely to pull up fake or questionable info from paid shills. I wonder how feasible it would be to create a decentralized chain of trust for product and service reviews.

[0] https://www.fakespot.com

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#96

Post by dhimes »

miles_matthias wrote: post #62

Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F grade because people were "suspiciously positive". Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake. In her case, she knows these people personally and th…

Replying to sibling comments: to be fair to miles_matthias, it's hard to NOT have your friends review on Amazon etc. They all want to do it. I just checked my wife's and I recognize several friends' names in the reviews on Amazon.

OTOH, she got hosed on Goodreads by someone who admitted to not reading the book, and several people came along and validated the hosing (like a voting circle or something). This is a pretty difficult problem.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#97

Post by akshaypuradkar »

i had a friend who worked at a place whose owners had a forum board(or perhaps many) and the employees working there were supposed to

1. search shit up the internet. this could be any random stuff. electronics to politics to plain BS. 2. start a thread by logging into one of the board accounts by literally copy pasting the stuff they chose to select based on some criteria. 3. reply the question from different accounts(all taken from a pool), usually more copy pasted shit. 4. copy-paste all that into some document and submit it as a worklog to the management.

i think the source of income was advertisement(what else could support such a thing?). what i found fascinating was that this cottage industry somehow managed to pay middle-class salaries to about 20 odd employees in a place like suburban mumbai by siphoning money from a burgeoning advertising industry and doing nothing of any value whatsoever. i guess this is what Friedman really meant by a free market. stupidity begets stupidity!

the point being, it's become really difficult to figure what's of value in this weird weird world!

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#98

Post by dhimes »

Someone1234 wrote: post #77
miles_matthias wrote: post #62

Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F grade because people were "suspiciously positive". Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it being fake. In her case, she knows these people personally and th…

> my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who review her books. So your wife has people she knows leave positive reviews in order to bump her book's review score and you're upset that Fakespot gave it an F due to them being non-organic reviews? As a consumer it sounds like Fakespot is doing a great job, and exactly what it states on the tin. What your wife is doing is at best dishonest…

So your wife has people she knows

Not necessarily. See my comment sibling to GP.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#99

Post by maxxxxx »

pjc50 wrote: post #88
jlarocco wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon. Out of curiosity, why do you assume people don't realize they aren't buying from Amazon?

Why would people think they're not buying from Amazon when they're on the Amazon web site and their credit card gets billed to Amazon? (Can't remember, but do the parcels come in Amazon packaging too?)

Mostly yes

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#100

Post by bradlys »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #85
jacek wrote: post #39

The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are my two anecdotes: 1. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review. Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That manipulation technique wasn't enough…

> When I need a cable or something similar, I resorted to buy only Amazon Basic cables for the PC/monitor/TV and Anker cables/charger for the mobile phones. It is not the cheapest option but you still get high quality for a low price and you don't have to deal with any shady shops.

Eh. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FA4Y7N2/ref=oh_aui_sear...

I bought that 3 years ago. I think mine is doing okay but you can tell from the reviews that it wasn't a quality cable. I doubt Amazon has really up'd their game since then.

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