Author doesn't know what dark patterns means.
Amazon Dark Patterns
21–30 of 278 posts
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#22An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews, which could explain both why there seem to be many fake reviews and why one would get blocked from writing reviews (basically falling victim to a false positive of their fake review detection). Obviously there is also some bad UX thrown in for good measure (being able to write a review without being able to send it), but w…
Well, this bad UX has a positive consequence for Amazon, unintended or not.
Products with good reviews generate more sales than those with comments stating problems with the product or delivery process, specially among infrequent buyers. (Frequent buyers may learn to ignore comments altogether, or at least spot valuable comments from fakes).
So the bad pattern is not allowing fake reviews as much as it is rejecting legitimate negative reviews.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless I'm missing something,that kind of masking behaviour is what typically causes me to exit an app and manually give it a low review. Are you saying you are actively gating the reviews? :-/
Pretty much exactly what Meriton was just fined AU$3m for today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649912
As far as I know, the rule is, you can only show the native app-store review dialog once, if the user cancels, you won't get any review ever. So the idea is, to show your own until the user finally decides to review.
But now the growth hackers of the world had the brilliant idea to treat bad reviews like "the user isn't ready for a review"
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#24This rant is not well written. The first issue looks like a bug on Amazon's side. I'm not going to assume malice without something pointing in that direction. The author writes "What would have happend if I had left a more positive review? Would that be allowed?" Well, would it? I see no indication it would.
Those reviews are indeed suspicious, and Amazon should do a better job of detecting fake review accounts.
The third issue is the author complaining about the shipping in a product review. An understandable mistake, but Amazon is right not to publish it. When trying to learn about a product it's annoying to scroll past shipping reviews like "Arrived quickly, five stars!"
In total, I see no dark pattern at all.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#25Having recently unsubscribed from Prime, I can say their dark patterns don't stop there. About 5 pages to complete the process, in which the CTA to confirm bumps around the page, gets less prominent, and is given such lousy loss-aversion labels as "Give up my prime benefits".
Strangely it wasn't so bad for me, I live in the UK. I wonder if EU rules are different?
I have to say for all the people complaining but still staying with Amazon, there's a simple solution that will force their hand if enough people act:
Stop buying from them.
Personally I cancelled my Prime subscription because no service is worth enough to me to force other human beings to pee in bottles to avoid work breaks for fear of being sanctioned.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#26I also had to implement this pattern for app reviews. Show a custom review dialog, if the user gives 4-5 stars send them to the app store for the real review, if not just say "thank you" and close the dialog. Repeat until one day they'll give you a good review.
I hope you at least anonymously reported that behavior to appropriate authorities. And started searching for a new job.
Sadly this isn't against the rules. Probably because the users still can go to the app-store and give you a bad review, haha
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#27An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews, which could explain both why there seem to be many fake reviews and why one would get blocked from writing reviews (basically falling victim to a false positive of their fake review detection). Obviously there is also some bad UX thrown in for good measure (being able to write a review without being able to send it), but w…
Amazon has been removing reviews and locking listings from receiving new reviews too while they investigate the past couple of weeks. This is probably the reason.
I've also heard that if a listing receives too many reviews in one day, they will prevent it from receiving any new reviews. I think certain unscrupulous sellers have also figured out how to take advantage of that, which is a little funny. Just post all your fake reviews before your unhappy real American customers wake up...
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#28An interesting dark pattern (albeit unrelated to the review flow) is during the standard checkout process. on the last screen before the purchase, the Amazon logo image / header no longer links back to the Amazon homepage like the rest of the site. I guess keeping the user captive leads to more sales
this is the classic pattern that has been used by ecommerce sites for over a decade now. Once the checkout process starts, the number of links that may distract your checkout process drops dramatically.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#29Author doesn't know what dark patterns means.
Here's a good site explaining it.
https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern
Their homepage video starts with a bunch of examples from Amazon:
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#30An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews, which could explain both why there seem to be many fake reviews and why one would get blocked from writing reviews (basically falling victim to a false positive of their fake review detection). Obviously there is also some bad UX thrown in for good measure (being able to write a review without being able to send it), but w…
If the person who wrote the post could immediately identify the clearly fake reviews I see no reason why Amazon could not use the same method.
As in employ someone to go and trace users who post reviews to see if they’ve reviewed the same products?
Maybe you meant make a system that can do it, and do it without false positives to not upset legitimate users when their own reviews are removed.
I’m confused about the ease people expect this problem to be solved. It’s so easy to solve it exists on every popular platform: see the paid, fake reviews on the Apple App Store.