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Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

theguardian.com

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Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#261

Post by simias »

da_murvel wrote: post #243
simias wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really baffling to me how despite being one of the largest companies in the world and being centered around e-commerce Amazon doesn't do anything about these issues weakening their core product. I say "do nothing" not "fail to stop" because I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon does anything at all to prevent or discourage these behaviors. I wonder if it's because they push the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it…

I don't think it's baffling at all. Facebook is the largest social media company, and what do they do to try to stop all of the propaganda, troll factories and hateful things going on there? Naught. They know that they are the largest company and therefore doesn't have to do anything as long as their position stays the same. Which it seems to be doing. Yes, there are people leaving the platform but where do they go?…

I don't think it's completely the same thing though, this propaganda and trolling could arguably be a positive for Facebook by driving engagement. Of course there's a balance to maintain but it's not necessarily all bad. Socially and ethically it might be bad but bean-counting-wise it might not be that terrible. Facebook doesn't really care if people trust what they see on the platform as long as they generate pageviews and get ad impressions.

On the other hand I don't see how fake reviews and bootleg items do anything but hurt Amazon by making people distrust the platform. You don't want to add friction to the buying process by making people triple check that they're not getting duped.

And it's not like it's a new problem either, lack of trust was a huge issue in the early days of e-commerce, I'm sure Amazon doesn't want to return to these days where you felt like you were swimming in a sea of scams.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#262

Post by jwillmer »

ceyhunkazel wrote: post #209
esalman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently researching car dashcams. On Amazon the top brand has thousands of reviews but the most critical one accuses the seller of offering free mounts in exchange for 5* reviews. The second most prominent one is featured heavily in a deal aggregator website which I knew about from before. I decided to do my research outside of Amazon. The most reliable brand which I chose based on independent review sites and…

One way to overcome this sort by "Most reviews" which normally Amazon hides (I think they do it to give chance to sell new brands/products more). You have more chance to find the product you want and more trustful if it had 10K reviews instead of 10 reviews. I wrote about how to do it. Full disclosure, I am the author of free web app tool on the article. https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate...

Would you mind adding an option to change amazon country?

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#263

Post by nonninz »

jwillmer wrote: post #262
ceyhunkazel wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to overcome this sort by "Most reviews" which normally Amazon hides (I think they do it to give chance to sell new brands/products more). You have more chance to find the product you want and more trustful if it had 10K reviews instead of 10 reviews. I wrote about how to do it. Full disclosure, I am the author of free web app tool on the article. https://medium.com/@ceyhunkazel/amazon-search-hack-eliminate...

Would you mind adding an option to change amazon country?

This.

In Europe each country (with an Amazon presence ofc) has its own website, each with its own stock and sellers. Buying from the US website is often a no-go, because of the shipping times and the customs fees, and also buying from other european countries is often bad as you forego free shipping and returns.

But anyway thank you for your product, it's already pretty useful for brand products. :)

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#264

Post by angstrom »

brilee wrote: post #60
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, the pervasive Amazon counterfeit problem is unrelated to the fake review problem. Both are serious problems that Amazon does little to combat, but they're not the same. The counterfeiting is more insidious because Amazon is entirely at fault for mixing legit merchandise with counterfeits. Fake reviews on the other hand aren't Amazon's fault. That's just the world being filled with heinous assholes out to…

Amazon absolutely has to deal with the fake review problem. In some ways, you can think of it as analogous to google search. Google's moneymaker isn't the search; it's the ads. But Google spends a lot of time fixing search quality and dealing with people gaming search results because otherwise the ad revenue disappears.

I wouldn't be surprised if the actions Google took to push Amazon results off the first page product results skewed the Amazon product catalog towards gamed marketplace results. Amazon was getting a free ride on Google's results sort of like Wikipedia for a fairly long time. Now you have to dig to find links to either of them. The effect on Amazon may also be a result of pricing changes Google made around 2015.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#265

Post by alexgmcm »

simias wrote: post #261
da_murvel wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's baffling at all. Facebook is the largest social media company, and what do they do to try to stop all of the propaganda, troll factories and hateful things going on there? Naught. They know that they are the largest company and therefore doesn't have to do anything as long as their position stays the same. Which it seems to be doing. Yes, there are people leaving the platform but where do they go?…

I don't think it's completely the same thing though, this propaganda and trolling could arguably be a positive for Facebook by driving engagement. Of course there's a balance to maintain but it's not necessarily all bad. Socially and ethically it might be bad but bean-counting-wise it might not be that terrible. Facebook doesn't really care if people trust what they see on the platform as long as they generate pagevi…

The problem is that before you bought stuff largely from Amazon.

Whereas now it's more akin to eBay which always suffered with scam problems (and responded by giving buyers far more power - which then resulted in buyers scamming sellers instead of the reverse).

I wish it could return to the days where you just bought stuff from Amazon - or at least make it very easy to only search for their products.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#266

Post by deltron3030 »

simias wrote: post #237
x0054 wrote: post #111

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I…

It's really baffling to me how despite being one of the largest companies in the world and being centered around e-commerce Amazon doesn't do anything about these issues weakening their core product. I say "do nothing" not "fail to stop" because I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon does anything at all to prevent or discourage these behaviors. I wonder if it's because they push the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it…

They're betting on the regulatory force of their review system and product listing SEO, which is linked to their search algorithm. The truth is that it's easier for smaller sellers/brands who laser focus on one or a few products to outcompete bigger brands with many products, and as a consequence appear first in the search results.

The more niche a product is, the easier it is to compete. It's just hard to tell an establish brand apart from a brand that just does Amazon, if you search for something (brands) outside of your knowledge domain. Smaller private label brands can appear more professional as a result of that mentioned laser focus and having Amazon as only channel.

In my opinion it's also the fault of the bigger brands not investing enough into the optimization of their listing, they don't depend on it.

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#267

Post by mschuster91 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #195
sombremesa wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, it's actually Amazon's search algorithms that are to blame. Those have been known for a long time to be sub-par, now, at least since 2012 (when I worked there). If you search for a brand name, products without that brand name anywhere should just not show up, period. (I suppose an exception is if you just don't have it, kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actu…

> kind of like when Netflix shows "shows related to" when they don't have what you're actually looking for. I wish they would fix that and make it communicate clearly that they don't have this show, and the following are just the alternatives. Because with the UX looking identical for when there is a match and when there is none, this feels like a cheap attempt at duping people into watching something anyway.

> I wish they would fix that and make it communicate clearly that they don't have this show, and the following are just the alternatives.

I'd like if they'd say "we have this show in the markets X, Y and Z. If you'd like a change, write an email to or tweet to @studio."

This way, studios could finally be subjected to shitstorms. After enough of these, maybe they'll turn down their greed somewhat. I don't want to pay six different streaming providers, that gets more expensive than US cable tv prices...

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#268

Post by [deleted] »

x0054 wrote: post #111

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I…

[deleted]

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#269

Post by [deleted] »

ericd wrote: post #143
eightysixfour wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.

It's only the same model if you ignore the large psychological difference.

[deleted]

Re: Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

#270

Post by Regardsyjc »

reagan83 wrote: post #56
Regardsyjc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake negative reviews are a tactic of nasty competitors. I'm an Amazon seller and they are rampant. The more competitive the category you're in, the nastier it gets. They will bomb you with negative reviews using certain keywords that will trigger an Amazon algorithm to shut you down. Amazon has a few systems in place for QC, things like 6% negative customer experience rate or certain keywords like counterfeit or rel…

Great insight - what services do you use to watch your own & other sellers? Been meaning to write software in this space for a while. Feel free to dm me email is in profile.

I use Viral Launch's Market Intelligence to get data on # of reviews, estimated sales, review %, etc. I also use Helium10 to get keyword search data supposedly from the Amazon Advertising API. Between those two sets of data- it's very easy to see bad sellers.

There's dozens of tools for Amazon sellers and I think what they're missing is something that connects ALL the moving parts together as well as helps Amazon sellers expand outside the Amazon marketplace. Amazon software tends to be expensive.

Helium10's cheapest plan is $100/mo.

The software I use for inventory is $50/mo (Inventorylab),

a repricing software was $50/mo- now maybe $100/mo (Appeagle/InformedCo).

Feedback email software is $20-50+/mo (FeedbackGenius, ZonPages, etc).

Restocking software is $50-100+/mo (RestockPro).

Sourcing software is $50+/mo (Pricechecker 2, Tactical Arbitrage, etc).

I learned Python to automate some of my processes because I was spending thousands of dollars for my own tiny Amazon store with $100k+ annual sales. There's over 100,000 sellers on Amazon that do $100k+ annual sales as well hundreds of very big sellers ($10m+) that need custom software solutions. So it's a niche but interesting market.

It's a pretty exciting space. Amazon changes so often, every few months, making it difficult for small sellers and software providers to keep up. The best software last year is no longer the best software today.

Currently I see the biggest competition in Amazon PPC software companies: Teikametrics, Feedvisor. If anyone's interested in building software for Amazon- I'd love to connect.

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