if you are Amazon you don't have time to read all the reviews carefully. How do you detect such artificial "gaming" behavior? It's natural behavior for the sellers to try to boost their reviews (at the consumers expense).
Amazon Dark Patterns
41–50 of 278 posts
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#42Author 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: https://darkpatterns.org
Google has one built into mobile Youtube with Chromecast. When you open a video and go to click the cast button, the "visit advertiser" button immediately shifts right into the place of the cast button, causing you to click into an advertiser website.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#43I once wrote a 1-star review on amazon for a top-selling product that had almost only positive reviews. The review was published but they quietly changed its contents. They replaced some words (I guess it was too strong language like "crap" or something) but even worse they removed at least one whole sentence and after that the review didn't make much sense anymore and it looked like I wrote it like that. Then I watc…
Wait amazon edits your reviews? That's shaddy as hell, I can understand removing a review for "strong language" but changing its content without asking the author is borderline scammy.
I couldn't find similar stories online (although admittedly that's pretty hard to search for). I'd think it would be a big deal if Amazon was caught doing that, wouldn't it be?
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#44This kind of doesn't surprise me.
I know I tend to buy what has the best price/star ratio. Whether or not Amazon is directly involved, I don't know. But given how quickly marketing got attached to social media, I imagine gaming reviews is just another part of an online presence package, along with controlling search results, and getting something popular into social outlets (a meme is highly desired).
Irony being people are starting to adapt and most of these social media and reviews will just be bots commenting on each other.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#45An 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.
I did a lot of work on anti-botting some years ago. It's not as easy as it looks. Often you spot a pattern that is obviously fake, like here, but discover it can't generalise without huge numbers of false positives.
For example I would expect lots of legitimate users to review the same small set of TV shows or video games if they buy into a series or franchise.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#46I once wrote a 1-star review on amazon for a top-selling product that had almost only positive reviews. The review was published but they quietly changed its contents. They replaced some words (I guess it was too strong language like "crap" or something) but even worse they removed at least one whole sentence and after that the review didn't make much sense anymore and it looked like I wrote it like that. Then I watc…
Wait amazon edits your reviews? That's shaddy as hell, I can understand removing a review for "strong language" but changing its content without asking the author is borderline scammy. I couldn't find similar stories online (although admittedly that's pretty hard to search for). I'd think it would be a big deal if Amazon was caught doing that, wouldn't it be?
I don’t think there’s anything borderline about it. Sounds like outright fraud to me.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#47An 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 your maybes are valid it simply means that these Amazon guys are new in the business and will figure out how to design user interface once they have the resources.Lets give them a slack, aye? Seriously though, I canceled my prime after I got a fake SD Card that was sold by Amazon. There was no straightforward way of returning it, had to contact customer support. Later I looked closely and I noticed the reviews war…
It's not necessarily a resource problem, from my time there there is an institutional lack of respect toward UX and front end and this is might still be the case.
There's also a myriad of custom Perl templates that are essentially impossible to maintain. I once had to investigate where a feedback form sent feedback to, the answer was nowhere for about a year.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#48No need to look so far for dark patterns, the whole trick to get you to click to become a member for Amazon Prime, constantly, using all the dirty tricks in the book, should deserve a whole page in itself.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#49The dumbbells being damaged during delivery reminds me of an other annoyance with amazon reviews: they won't let you distinguish between actual issues with the products and issues with the delivery/Amazon after-sale services etc...
I can't count the number of low-star reviews where it says something like "the guy tried to deliver at the wrong time" or "I bought the wrong product by mistake and Amazon wouldn't take it back" or whatever. That doesn't help me at all.
Re: Amazon Dark Patterns
#50Although they should have let him write the review, I don't think people should leave reviews for damaged/broken items before they've tried to remedy the situation with the supplier.
Why? When I receive a damaged product, this causes me substantial hassle (communicate with customer support, send item back, order replacement, ...). It seems very natural to write a review that reflects the poor quality of the product in this situation, and this review would be a useful signal to others.
My take is that damaged and broken items happen, particularly when items are new. I'm not saying that this information is irrelevant, but as a review of the product it isn't valid (as it's a review of a damaged product) and as a review of the supplier it isn't that helpful either (as I'm more interested in how the supplier responds to this situation: any supplier can send you what they have in stock, the true test is what happens when things go wrong). So, as per my original comment, I think you should seek remedy before reviewing, not after.