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FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

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Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#101

Post by duado »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #52
duado wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopping on Amazon is like shopping in Chinatown now. The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. This shit must be working, for some definition of working. Personally, anything that touches my child, or goes in my body, is not allowed to be bought on Amazon.

Most companies collapse from within, they don't get trounced by competitors. Competitors come along with a new angle that seems innocuous at first, but then turns out to entail 'the thing people want'. It's very, very easy from an operational perspective to focus on the data-driven decision to sell crap, to ignore fake reviews etc. because that's what sells 'today'. But an A/B test (short view) does not capture users…

My personal theory is that they are doing this very deliberately... they view “selling stuff” as a lousy business and AWS as the real business, and are just maximizing short term retail profits to invest in AWS.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#102

Post by fogetti »

ashelmire wrote: post #24
potatofarmer45 wrote: post #6

There are so many fake reviews on Amazon that the "average" stars for a product are no longer reliable indicators of quality. Especially for cheap electronics (read: headphones), products that have only been listed for a month somehow have hundreds of 5 star glowing reviews. When I do research nowadays I have to deliberately select the 1 star reviews to see if there is a real issue that's glossed over by the paid rev…

Same. A friend in the ecommerce industry tells of some pretty dark patterns - some companies won't allow negative reviews to be posted at all. Attempts to leave negative reviews trigger chat or other communication methods instead of posting the review. Amazon also won't allow most negative reviews - I've had many 1 star reviews denied by their automated system, but this has never happened with a 5 star review.

Exactly. If you go to Amazon's seller forum you can see how those little snowflakes who call themselves merchants complain about the fact that they couldn't remove all the negative reviews. I guess in the end they all find their ways to get rid of negative reviews.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#103

Post by longerthoughts »

thatoneuser wrote: post #62
vonmoltke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. Why? How do we "know" they have the data? How do we "know" that can act on whatever data they have? People here seem to ascribe a level of omniscience to tech giants that I'm not certain they deserve.

Are you seriously proposing Amazon doesn't realize what's going on with their review systems?

Knowing the problem exists isn't the same as having granular data on the scope and nature of the problem. That said... I'd bet they have some data.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#104

Post by potatofarmer45 »

function_seven wrote: post #76
Guest10928391 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even off Amazon I feel it's becoming more and more difficult to find honest product reviews. For example, if I search on Google for "best umbrellas", every result on my front page is a website that is filled with Amazon affiliate links. I feel like none of them can be trusted because most have never touched any of the umbrellas, but they are just doing a top 10 list and rewriting opinions they read on Amazon. Of cour…

My solution to this has been to find a subreddit that's devoted to the product in question. If there is one, then I'll check the sidebar there, read through some posts, search for a few keywords. Basically spend 15 minutes researching. Reddit still has shills and astroturfs, but for a lot of niches they're often aggressively moderated out of the community. To go along with your umbrella example: Unfortunately /r/umbr…

This is a good idea. I'll do it from now on

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#105

Post by derefr »

vonmoltke wrote: post #60
duado wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopping on Amazon is like shopping in Chinatown now. The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. This shit must be working, for some definition of working. Personally, anything that touches my child, or goes in my body, is not allowed to be bought on Amazon.

> The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. Why? How do we "know" they have the data? How do we "know" that can act on whatever data they have? People here seem to ascribe a level of omniscience to tech giants that I'm not certain they deserve.

Mostly because the dozen-or-so data-analytics services that AWS provides are all architecturally of the "scratching-your-own-novel-itch" shape rather than the "best-practices, well-known-standard" or "bug-for-bug-clone-of-the-thing-some-other-cloud-vendor-is-doing" shape. Amazon built DynamoDB, acquired Redshift, etc. to use them.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#106

Post by Ecolog »

function_seven wrote: post #76
Guest10928391 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even off Amazon I feel it's becoming more and more difficult to find honest product reviews. For example, if I search on Google for "best umbrellas", every result on my front page is a website that is filled with Amazon affiliate links. I feel like none of them can be trusted because most have never touched any of the umbrellas, but they are just doing a top 10 list and rewriting opinions they read on Amazon. Of cour…

My solution to this has been to find a subreddit that's devoted to the product in question. If there is one, then I'll check the sidebar there, read through some posts, search for a few keywords. Basically spend 15 minutes researching. Reddit still has shills and astroturfs, but for a lot of niches they're often aggressively moderated out of the community. To go along with your umbrella example: Unfortunately /r/umbr…

Reddit is so useful in that regard. So many niches with honest and detailed reviews that I usually don't buy something online without checking a relevant subreddit first.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#107

Post by derefr »

fogetti wrote: post #102
ashelmire wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. A friend in the ecommerce industry tells of some pretty dark patterns - some companies won't allow negative reviews to be posted at all. Attempts to leave negative reviews trigger chat or other communication methods instead of posting the review. Amazon also won't allow most negative reviews - I've had many 1 star reviews denied by their automated system, but this has never happened with a 5 star review.

Exactly. If you go to Amazon's seller forum you can see how those little snowflakes who call themselves merchants complain about the fact that they couldn't remove all the negative reviews. I guess in the end they all find their ways to get rid of negative reviews.

I mean, sometimes, it's justified. Should a negative review about a wireless-charging bug in a phone stick around once the manufacturer pushes out an update to the firmware that makes the bug go away?

This is why app stores only show reviews/scores for the current version of the app. There's no such thing as "versions" of a product, though. (Or, well, there are product revisions with distinct UPC codes, but an OTA firmware update doesn't qualify as one, and yet should be a new "version" for the purposes of reviews.)

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#108

Post by jhall1468 »

kiba wrote: post #93
ams6110 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well? What's wrong with Consumer Reports? Sign up, pay for it, done. Why does valuable information that takes a lot of time and expense to produce need to be free? That attitude is the root of most of what's wrong with the web today. s/internet/web/

I have a problem with being nickeled and dimed with every subscription service.

The whole reason it's subscription is to avoid advertisers. CR doesn't have to answer to manufacturers so their reviews are very reliable.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#109

Post by CamelCaseName »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #29
president wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the 1 star negative reviews are faked. Sellers pay users to leave negative reviews to competitors. EDIT: Funny how completely broken and anti-customer the Amazon review system is given that the #1 leadership principle at Amazon [1] is the following: "Customer Obsession - Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to com…

If I were inflating my rating with 5-star reviews, I'd also want some 1-star reviews to complain about inconsequential things like "the coffee machine's cord was only 5 meters long" or "it was a bit louder than I expected, waking me up more than I wanted during my morning routine."

No you wouldn't. 1 star reviews will tank your average star rating and increase your NCX, which are far more important than the off chance someone reads your negative reviews closely.

Unless you're selling 20 dollar bills for $5, you'll naturally get negative reviews.

I've had to pull several products off Amazon because someone left an early, nonsense review that killed sales. (E.g. "Fast and easy" - 2 stars or "Works perfectly. Thanks!" - 1 star)

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#110

Post by owenmarshall »

jawns wrote: post #9
ceejayoz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be enforceable? It's a court order. It's also quite standard: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2016/03/...

My apologies. I should have said "recoverable" rather than "enforceable." I would assume that if a company is in trouble with the FTC, it's probably not in the best financial shape after paying even the costs associated with the suspended judgment. So if the FTC finds that the company made an omission and the full judgment comes due, will it actually recover that money? Or is the point to just fine them out of existe…

> Or is the point to just fine them out of existence, without concern for actually recovering the money?

That’s my read. The FTC seems to be hanging the sword of Damocles in a very public way. If this company doesn’t comply, a press release describing how the US government is absolutely wrecking them is probably worth not recovering all the judgement.

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