Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon's Fake Review Problem

brianbien.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 336 posts

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#191

Post by fencepost »

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…

My wife though not an author is online friends with more than I even want to think about. In some communities there is a LOT of interaction and loyalty between the authors and fans and the authors are quite active on social media. In addition, for a lot of more niche books (e.g. What 50 Shades of Gray would have remained had it not gone viral) the total number of books sold may be surprisingly small. A lot of those small publisher or self published authors are also the people that 5-10 years ago were posting their writings on community discussion sites (e.g. Bruce Bretthauer's Families military SF series).

So, when an author who's been writing a serial on a discussion board finishes and publishes it, there's a preexisting community of folks who have been reading it all along and are likely to purchase it.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#192

Post by mjevans »

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…

You require the data to be part of the listing, and you share that data with the consumer. It thus becomes a statement that can be enforced as part of advertising to a customer.

Counterfeits would be one thing to go after. Lying to customers would be another.

After a while 'dodgy factories' and/or sellers that lie more often than not would be able to be sorted out and removed from listings. More importantly factories and sellers could build actual solid reputations for telling the truth.

Most importantly, it would make middle-level-marketing stuff much more obvious.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#193

Post by shahbaby »

Recently I've avoided buying certain things just because I didn't want to put in the time to do my own research on it.

I would rather not buy it than take the risk of getting ripped off buy a fake review.

Some things are worth the money but not the time.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#194

Post by ashman5 »

An even bigger problem they have is with the fake 2 Day shipping. Tried to order a Prime 2 Day shipping item today (Sat 12/16) and delivery was 2 day guaranteed for Thursday 12/21. And recently, I'm getting zero weekend delivery. Oddly, recent Ebay orders were delivered on Sunday.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#195

Post by fencepost »

miles_matthias wrote: post #162
Someone1234 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

See my second edit. I didn't explain it well. She comes to get to know her best fans after they become fans. They leave honest reviews on their own accord. This is NOT her asking for random friends and family to leave a positive review. I wasn't clear before.

I'll compare this to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, authors of the Liaden universe. It's classic space opera and for years was put out by a small publisher. They had a very dedicated and vocal set of fans but didn't get much traction in the broader SF community for quite some time.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#196

Post by fencepost »

corvallis wrote: post #7

I am much more wary about buying from Amazon than most of my peers, who easily click and buy on a whim or out of habit. I went to buy a toy at a brick and mortar, and compared the price to Amazon while there - $12.99 in the store and $27.xx at Amazon! I think they've marketed them to be the low price leaders but that's definitely not the case. I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about…

I've seen similarly high prices on office supplies of the sort that people would set up subscriptions for like toner. My expectation there is that someone hacked the price up in the hopes that those subscribers wouldn't notice.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#197

Post by pwaai »

fencepost wrote: post #195
miles_matthias wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my second edit. I didn't explain it well. She comes to get to know her best fans after they become fans. They leave honest reviews on their own accord. This is NOT her asking for random friends and family to leave a positive review. I wasn't clear before.

I'll compare this to Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, authors of the Liaden universe. It's classic space opera and for years was put out by a small publisher. They had a very dedicated and vocal set of fans but didn't get much traction in the broader SF community for quite some time.

D for deception - https://www.fakespot.com/product/fledgling-liaden-universe-b...

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#198

Post by RickS »

catdog wrote: post #105
rconti wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I've never really had an issue because I chalked it up more to people buying cheap crap and expecting it to be good. But $65 for a pair of headphones isn't exactly cheap. Was it a familiar brand but maybe a counterfeit? Or was it a brand you've never heard of, but the price is justified by very positive reviews? I'm curious.

Headphones seem to be a very strange category in general. You can get exceptional good value for money if you know what to buy and on the other hand pay a lot for utter crap.

My secret weapon for headphones is to buy pro audio/studio headphones. Their market just won't let them get away with gimmicks.

If you want closed back (recommended for office listening - keeps noise in an out) get AKG k550/k553 (negligibly different editions of the same thing)

If you want open back (scary accurate but bleeds sound like crazy) get a pair of Grados, the lower end ones like the 65 will do fine. I say this with love, but those headphones ruined some records for me. You can tell where they cut vocal takes on major label records because the noise floor drops. Crazy stuff.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#199

Post by seanwilson »

Do any companies offer you some kind of incentive to write reviews or rate all the products you bought? I would have thought some variation of this would be a good way to drown out fake reviews. Maybe this is too expensive to do well.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#200

Post by intopieces »

Amazon's solution to fake reviews is Amazon Basics, a "verified good" version of whatever you were looking for. Thus, they have little incentive to combat fake reviews for products not directly sold by them, since that bad experience, they hope, will cause you to run back to them for the product next time.

They also get to avoid being called a monopoly by selling products of various qualities and from various sellers.

Post reply on HN