How does one protect oneself from these? Are there secure / private browser extensions that might cross-reference those reviews to other sites? Is everything fake news now?
Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
31–40 of 273 posts
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#32Star ratings in general are just poor. In a 1 to 5 star rating, 3 is average but most people would perceive 3 stars to be above average. People tend to leave reviews only when they are displeased with the product, really pleased with the product or get something in return for making the review, in this case free products. I tend to just filter on reviews that are 2 or 3 stars and use those to work out the cons of the…
Really? I think most people perceive anything less than 4 stars (or even 4.5 stars for some) as "bad". I for one won't buy anything that are "merely" 3-stars.
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#33It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.
You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.
> You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.
They must not be interested. After all, they still get paid and have a level of legal insulation due to how they've structure Amazon marketplace. I wonder how long it'll take for their overall brand to take a hit over this, though.
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.
Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.
> Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.
I think fake reviews are pretty widespread. This Washington Post story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant...) talks about how Facebook groups are used trade free stuff in exchange for good reviews. I joined some, and they seemed to have a lot of traffic. FakeSpot seems to put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings.
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#35Hmm, I had (apparently wrongly) assumed this had become common knowledge. Now I am beginning to wonder what percentage of people are aware of this issue. On a different note, I saw elsewhere (Axiom perhaps? I cannot remember) that amazon claimed it was only roughly 1% of all reviews that were paid for. Which based on my past experience in E-Commerce, seems significantly lower than would be estimates.
> Hmm, I had (apparently wrongly) assumed this had become common knowledge. me too. maybe NPR is behind the times. also: Amazon is a sponsor of NPR (just sayin') > amazon claimed it was only roughly 1% of all reviews that were paid for. yes. that's right. the 1% figure also appears in the NPR article: "Our approximation is that less than 1 percent of reviews are inauthentic," says Sharon Chiarella, vice president of…
Even if we make the (dubious, imo) assumption that the low 1% figure is accurate, it can still be a huge problem.
There are 480 million products on Amazon, many in somewhat obscure categories. Seems that if the fake reviews are simply concentrated in a popular 1% slice, we've got almost 5 million popular products with ~~100% fake reviews.
Obviously oversimplified, but the likelihood is that the reviews are sufficiently concentrated to be a problem using their own figures, and the real figures are likely higher
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
: ) Well don't take it on trust, validate it works. And keep validating it still works, because one day it won't. Everyone seems to sell out in the end.
It's impossible to validate. Further for all we know Fakespot (which curiously has been mentioned multiple times) might itself be a fake that undermines products that are sponsored, etc. It probably isn't, I'm just saying.
But how can I trust what you're saying? What if you've been paid off by Fakespot?
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#37It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.
You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a pr…
Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product.
Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two other examples from this past weekend).
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#38It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.
You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a pr…
>BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is.
Is this also true with items sold directly by Amazon?
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Hmm, I had (apparently wrongly) assumed this had become common knowledge. me too. maybe NPR is behind the times. also: Amazon is a sponsor of NPR (just sayin') > amazon claimed it was only roughly 1% of all reviews that were paid for. yes. that's right. the 1% figure also appears in the NPR article: "Our approximation is that less than 1 percent of reviews are inauthentic," says Sharon Chiarella, vice president of…
Even if we make the (dubious, imo) assumption that the low 1% figure is accurate, it can still be a huge problem. There are 480 million products on Amazon, many in somewhat obscure categories. Seems that if the fake reviews are simply concentrated in a popular 1% slice, we've got almost 5 million popular products with ~~100% fake reviews. Obviously oversimplified, but the likelihood is that the reviews are sufficient…
I would not assume that. The impact of a paid review decreases as the number of reviews increases. ie it probably better to pay for reviews for a low volume or new product
Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For
#40Star ratings in general are just poor. In a 1 to 5 star rating, 3 is average but most people would perceive 3 stars to be above average. People tend to leave reviews only when they are displeased with the product, really pleased with the product or get something in return for making the review, in this case free products. I tend to just filter on reviews that are 2 or 3 stars and use those to work out the cons of the…
Really? I think most people perceive anything less than 4 stars (or even 4.5 stars for some) as "bad". I for one won't buy anything that are "merely" 3-stars.
I think the issue, for me, is not that 3 stars is bad. I probably use a number of products each day that are legitimately 3-star worthy. It's that 3 stars on Amazon et al are an amalgam of 1 and 5 star reviews. There is then a risk, is this product bad but propped up by low reviews? Can I expect poor quality control? Etc