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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

#131

Post by organsnyder »

toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #17
organsnyder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're abusing the "color" parameter to be multiple products instead. It's astounding that Amazon has yet to actively prohibit this.

Nothing about Amazon’s abuse of their customers surprises me anymore. Their “Amazon’s Recommemdation” is a joke too, and they’re associating their brand with garbage. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gflpf0DrCgw Par for the Amazon course, cheap Chinese knockoffs. If they had anything other than a highly permissive refund system, they’d already be drowning in lawsuits. They must bleed refund money though, and I thought B…

Many customers (myself included) don't bother going through the refund process for a <$20 item. I've been shifting my buying to other sites, instead.

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

#132

Post by jperras »

derefr wrote: post #99
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/

Most people are only going to ever buy one or two things that are important enough to them to need to be thoroughly comparison-shopped. If there was a Consumer Reports-alike where I could pay "per report" (like paying for investment news "per report"), I'd pay. But I wouldn't subscribe.

> If there was a Consumer Reports-alike where I could pay "per report" (like paying for investment news "per report"), I'd pay. But I wouldn't subscribe.

I subscribed to CR for a month when I was shopping for a new dishwasher. After I found what I wanted, I unsubscribed. That seems functionally equivalent to what you want, at least when applied to large ticket items where the cost of a month of subscription is a small percentage of the total cost of the purchase being made.

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

#133

Post by james_s_tayler »

organsnyder wrote: post #14
duskwuff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or reviews that were transferred over from other products. Here's a case in point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MH9HPTR Over 3000 reviews... most of them for products completely unrelated to the one on sale. I see reviews for a bicycle lamp, a phone screen protector, and a voltage converter. This seems like a bug. Surely Amazon shouldn't allow sellers to transfer product reviews over from other products?

They're abusing the "color" parameter to be multiple products instead. It's astounding that Amazon has yet to actively prohibit this.

That's hilarious.

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

#134

Post by MagicPropmaker »

ams6110 wrote: post #75
ABCLAW wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the affiliate links, but I mind dishonest or low quality churned reviews. When TV shopping, I used the reviews from https://www.rtings.com/ They pointed me to issues and concerns with TV quality, provided me with an understanding of the trade-offs at various price points, and then directed me to a TV model that I purchased and have been incredibly satisfied with. Maybe we need a reputable internet equiva…

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/

Consumer reports is good; the problem is even the people on HN don't want to pay for any content anywhere.

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

#135

Post by velosol »

kanox wrote: post #121
omouse wrote: post #46

FINALLY. "In addition, the order requires the defendants to notify Amazon, Inc. that they purchased Amazon reviews of their Quality Encapsulations Garcinia Cambogia capsules and to identify to Amazon the purchased reviews." Online reviews don't work without trust . Maintaining trust is done by Amazon in this case, but sometimes the job is too big, especially at this scale. Amazon needs better tools perhaps, but the j…

> FINALLY Identities in comment sections have always been fake and anonymous and this is a good thing even if it results in occasional spam reviews. Legal action to enforce real IDs would make the internet worse . I don't get it. I'd expect highly technical forums to value anonymity despite its drawbacks but I'm continuously disappointed.

I don't see where the parent post (or FTC page) mentioned real IDs?

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

#136

Post by justin66 »

derefr wrote: post #99
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/

Most people are only going to ever buy one or two things that are important enough to them to need to be thoroughly comparison-shopped. If there was a Consumer Reports-alike where I could pay "per report" (like paying for investment news "per report"), I'd pay. But I wouldn't subscribe.

> If there was a Consumer Reports-alike where I could pay "per report" (like paying for investment news "per report"), I'd pay. But I wouldn't subscribe.

This is a strange comparison. I'm amazed there are any worthwhile investment news items available to purchase for less than the cost of an annual CR Digital subscription ($35). It's so cheap it's hardly worth worrying about if you're going to use it at all.

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

#137

Post by nameisu »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #118
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…

I have to assume that there's a team of about a dozen engineers at Amazon whose entire job is solving this problem, and every so often their boss has to write a report up to SVPs about how their attempts to solve the problem are going. I imagine it involves a lot of really cool machine learning algorithms and also some simple but obvious hacks, like just blacklisting certain wide IP ranges of known bad reviewers. I i…

bezos is busy getting his dick sucked to see all this

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

#138

Post by r00fus »

elektor wrote: post #31
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…

I recommend that you copy and paste the Amazon link to https://reviewmeta.com/ and https://www.fakespot.com/ to see how many of the reviews are actually legit.

Any browser extensions that use reviewmeta or fakespot so that I don’t have to cut and paste the URL?

Ideally I’d like to simply filter out all fake reviews and recalculate the stars rating.

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

#139

Post by TylerE »

ams6110 wrote: post #75
ABCLAW wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the affiliate links, but I mind dishonest or low quality churned reviews. When TV shopping, I used the reviews from https://www.rtings.com/ They pointed me to issues and concerns with TV quality, provided me with an understanding of the trade-offs at various price points, and then directed me to a TV model that I purchased and have been incredibly satisfied with. Maybe we need a reputable internet equiva…

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/

Consumer Reports tends to rate heavily on things I don't much care about, like initial reliability (which for most modern products is more than fine) while almost ignoring things like ACTUAL performance and ergonomics.

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

#140

Post by appsonify »

gonehome wrote: post #19
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can assume that Amazon operates in its own best interest. If fake reviews were hurting sales, it'd stop them within weeks. I'm guessing, for the time being, they're helping sales. Although, I haven't bought anything on Amazon in 3 years now, and I never will again. I think this problem is creating HUGE long-term downsides. Those are a lot tougher to calculate/quantify than the short-term benefits, though.

I wonder what the actual outcome is for sales - fake reviews and counterfeit products have driven me to purchase a certain class of items directly from the manufacturer and not on Amazon. Maybe most people don't bother with this though?

I no longer have amazon prime-had an awful experience with getting shit shipped, and come to think of it most were cheap alibaba electronics with markup.

but when I need some cables or other mundane things, it's convenient, although I don't really need it ASAP TMR like with Prime. I found that it puts a lot of pressure on the couriers and it just ruins the experience for everybody involved.

The end of this quarter for Amazon will disappoint.

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