Amazon Dark Patterns • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#241

Post by jdietrich » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 8:25 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #170

alexgmcm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But equally - does it matter? I would rather have less, but more accurate, reviews than have all of them but many of them being fake. It seems like a use-case where a high false positive rate would be acceptable. Unlike say, medical diagnosis or something.

If legit reviewers have their work deleted because of FPs they get annoyed and won't write more reviews, they may even stop using the site entirely.

Deletion is not the only option. They can weight the contribution of reviews to the overall score. They can weight the display order of reviews on the product page. They can weight the display order of products in SERPs. Assigning reviews, reviewers and sellers a "fakeness probability" allows you to do all sorts of subtle, useful stuff that clearly isn't being done right now.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#242

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 8:29 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #4

An 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…

I cannot buy any argument along the lines of "maybe it's just bad UX." Amazon has the resources to study and hire the best UX people in the business. There is no excuse for them having a UX problem except that they don't want good UX.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#243

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

mrcactu5 wrote: post #41

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).

Bezos is the richest person on the planet. He can afford to hire people to look through the reviews.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#244

Post by Aaronn » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 8:56 PM UTC

remir wrote: post #224

afpx wrote: post #115

I also see this very often with Apple’s App Store. About 30% of the time, my negative reviews are deleted. Even when I re-submit the reviews, they’re often deleted. This doesn’t happen to any of my positive reviews. I opened up several helpdesk tickets about this and got no answers. In fact, they had the audacity to tell me that it’s impossible to remove reviews and that it was probably user error.

I may be mistaken, but I heard reviews are deleted when the dev pushes an update to their app.

Yes this is correct. Apple added the option last year so developers can choose to reset all reviews when they release a new version or keep the old reviews.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/ios-app-developers-will-be...

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#245

Post by xster » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

I loved the interest-specific Reverb.com (for selling new and used musical gear) and made a point to buy stuff there to support the community even if it was more expensive or slower than a 'corporate' alternative. All the sellers' reviews were spectacular and I just thought people would be nicer on this platform because everyone just loved music and it's one big happy family but then I received some crap recently and just realized that they do the same thing and prevent negative reviews buy externalizing the (time and emotional) cost of forcing self-mediation when things go wrong.

Talk about a broken heart.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#246

Post by kapad » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

I've also had a review rejected under very similar circumstances. Like the OP, I too was leaving a bad review on a product that I had purchased a few months back. I had purchased the item in a lightning sale though.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#247

Post by amai » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

Please people use and support https://reviewmeta.com/ .

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#248

Post by Paul-ish » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #111

seren wrote: post #60

Prompted by this post, I wanted to check what happened to the 1-star review I have left 6 months ago. (Product worked for 3 days and then stopped, and after a replacement, the same thing happened). Sure enough, I have 0 comment in my profile, and I just checked, it has also disappeared from the product page. This is shady as hell, because I am 100% sure I wrote this review. I even wrote it twice, once on amazon.com a…

Consider the other side of this argument: should reviews be timeless? Many times a (good faith) vendor will make small, incremental changes to a product that addresses concerns that low-star reviewers point out. However, the product page remains the same - it does not distinguish between "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch A" and "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch C". It simply says "Seattle Coffee Beans". So if you leave a rev…

This happened to a Firefox extension I wote. I wrote the extension and published it to the FF extension store and got valid criticism in reviews pretty quickly. I addressed the issues and uploaded a new version of the extension. There was nothing I could do other than reply to the reviews to show I had addressed the issue. This doesn't get reflected in the overall rating. After the reviews nobody seemed to want to try the extension. Maybe it was because of the bad reviews, maybe not.

I was doing this for free, so I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on. I'm not gonna fight the system, but there is money involved I could see how someone would.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#249

Post by culot » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #83

techaddict009 wrote: post #53

I Was recently purchasing Macbook Battery from Amazon.in it was Rs.3100 and when I checked out and reached payment it showed 4199! I said WTH did it happen? I cancelled payment and found that Prime Membership Renewal was added to the cart without my permission. When I didnt want to renew it why did Amazon add it on its own? One more similar experience with AWS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652134

This is better than what Google play music does. It just auto renews. Fuck 2 factor auth. At least Amazon gives you that chance.

I love how Microsoft does charges for their Office/Onedrive package: they notify me about a week in advance to let me know they're planning on charging me.

I wish every service would give me days notice before a scheduled fee hits. No surprise auto-renewal would even be possible that way, no undesired continuation of subscription, all it would take is a courtesy email days in advance.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#250

Post by test6554 » Tue, Jul 31, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #226

jdo20bbx wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause people have to sell to eat in our culture of step on the next guy to have a life. And it encourages and even facilitates shady shit.

>Cause people have to sell to eat in our culture of step on the next guy to have a life. A bit hyperbolic, but also applies to pretty much every culture which has ever existed.

Wait... living organisms have to get food in order to eat? Next you are going to tell me that they are in competition for finite resources.