Amazon's Fake Review Problem • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#331

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

pishpash wrote: post #12

kelukelugames wrote: post #4

I worked at Amazon as an intern in 2005 and recall a talk on fake reviews. There were groups of people who wrote fake positive reviews for each other's books. Today I have friends who sell on Amazon and they write fake reviews for each other's products.

People give fake reviews all the time in other circumstances (e.g. at work, reviewing papers). Human nature really can't be changed. You just have to keep your skepticism and read critically.

I don't know anyone who has given a fake review on a paper. Could happen. I do know that reviewing papers can be a royal time suck on people who don't really have a lot of time to spare.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#332

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

JonoBB wrote: post #136

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.

Happens all the time. Last few times I've purchased electronics on Amazon that have been relatively recently listed (i.e 20 reviews or less), I've made a point of looking at the reviews. Click on first reviewer's name, and that reviewer has just happened to review 5 items all on the same day, and those are the only 5 items they have ever reviewed. And all 5 items are completely random (electronics, bed linen, garden…

You just described my reviewing behavior, and mine are legitimate reviews. I buy a variety of products. My purchase history is listed in my account, and every once in a while I go and review a bunch of them at the same time, in reverse order of purchase because that's the order in which they appear.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#333

Post by BoorishBears » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

y2kenny wrote: post #328

BoorishBears wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally the first hundreds were faked, followed by occasional fake reviews to drown out dissatisfaction

Even for known-good, popular, top-selling products? The example I cited has 24k+ reviews for the US and 3.8k+ for Canada.

Seeing as the site lists 11k reviews that were removed from the page, yes.

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#334

Post by doglet » Tue, Dec 19, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

Chattered wrote: post #308

Chattered wrote: post #307

It's not the same 23 word sentence. It's the same 23 word run-on. The first comma should be either a semi-colon, colon or stop.

Point being that plagiarism/copying might be easier to spot via mistakes. I understand that this is how scholars do it for ancient texts.

In other words, repetition of the same mistakes implies higher probability of copying

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#335

Post by doglet » Wed, Dec 20, 2017, 11:31 PM UTC

aSockPuppeteer wrote: post #289

Lately people will receive a message, email, or letter requesting a review from the vendor in exchange for a free product or heavily discounted one. It is hard to trust one thousand 5-star reviews.

similar to a lot of apartments incentivizing positive reviews from their tenants

Re: Amazon's Fake Review Problem

#336

Post by WhyNotHugo » Mon, Dec 25, 2017, 7:37 AM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #286

r_singh wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound good. Luckily here in India, I have to pay $8 a year for Prime and most items get delivered within 36 hours.

I'm in the US and Prime is $99/year.

It's also 99USD/year in Argentina, but we don't get the fast shipping US/India gets. We're also a "poorer" country, I'm not sure what they base their prices on.