I write fake online reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: I write fake online reviews

#71

Post by AznHisoka » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #48

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

>Why provide free services to billionaires? Also why I never saw the point of sites like quora. Why are all these "subject matter experts" spending countless hours writing free content for a platform that is ultimately locked in and going to either a) Be infested with ads or b) Going to charge money (like the publishers' racket in scientific publishing).

For some people, I think it satisfies a human need to sort of brag about your knowledge.

For other people, it's simply a way to market their website/product by linking to their site when answering a question.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#72

Post by agumonkey » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

They tap into a very natural desire to help other customers to find information about products and express themselves at the same time.

Issue is.. it's low signal/noise ratio and can be gamed to death. But it makes customers spend time on their e-shelves anyway.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#73

Post by oliwarner » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

paul7986 wrote: post #70

Everyone hates this but we need... A digital driver’s license/ID card type of thing for using the Internet(by country), especially considering deepfakes. You can still post anonymously but it won’t hold much weight vs. using your real name/ID. Something that if posting junk your reputation/credit/trustworthiness takes a hit!

Yes, that limits the number of identities a review can come from, but it cannot tell if they're lying. It's powerless against approaches like: "Buy my product from Amazon, leave me a 5 star review and I'll pay your fees, a $10 bonus and let you keep the item".

Re: I write fake online reviews

#74

Post by oliwarner » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

I'm starting to recognise that the Internet —despite all its potential benefits— is a platform to streamline the process of lying to each other. Occasionally political, occasionally commercial, and very often social white lies. The instant access it affords us is being exploited by everybody to affect how we think, what we buy and who we like.

It's very rapidly becoming much worse. Machine learning will adapt to people faster than legislation can protect them. And most of all, I don't know how we reverse all this.That's what really scares me. I usually have an answer for everything. All I've got here is: unplug all the things.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#75

Post by wool_gather » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #68

bubblethink wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why provide free services to billionaires? Also why I never saw the point of sites like quora. Why are all these "subject matter experts" spending countless hours writing free content for a platform that is ultimately locked in and going to either a) Be infested with ads or b) Going to charge money (like the publishers' racket in scientific publishing).

In the case of Stack Overflow, it's a great place for organic linking to your own content. "You can do xyz in order to accomplish this task. Source: " BAM. Just translated internet points into $0.002

You'll get marked as a spammer if you do this too much or in the wrong way.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#76

Post by wool_gather » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #74

I'm starting to recognise that the Internet —despite all its potential benefits— is a platform to streamline the process of lying to each other. Occasionally political, occasionally commercial, and very often social white lies. The instant access it affords us is being exploited by everybody to affect how we think, what we buy and who we like. It's very rapidly becoming much worse. Machine learning will adapt to peop…

Do you think there's a qualitative change here, though? People have been lying face-to-face, in various degrees, for those and other reasons forever.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#77

Post by paul7986 » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #73

paul7986 wrote: post #70

Everyone hates this but we need... A digital driver’s license/ID card type of thing for using the Internet(by country), especially considering deepfakes. You can still post anonymously but it won’t hold much weight vs. using your real name/ID. Something that if posting junk your reputation/credit/trustworthiness takes a hit!

Yes, that limits the number of identities a review can come from, but it cannot tell if they're lying. It's powerless against approaches like: "Buy my product from Amazon, leave me a 5 star review and I'll pay your fees, a $10 bonus and let you keep the item".

Well if your caught lying your online and offline identity/reputation will take a huge hit. It would be extremely detrimental financially and professionally to your life ... like having to go bankrupt. Be moral and just online or you don’t matter! Otherwise in time the Internet may not matter as much.

Further re deepfake stuff that’s even worse ...threat of going to jail!

Re: I write fake online reviews

#78

Post by gumby » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

I frequently do those surveys because if I plan to use something more than once I'd like it to be suited better to me, and because I feel I rarely get much info on how happy my own customers are.

In these cases I don't care either way about any billionaires, I care about the product being better for me.

I don't do these surveys when the company is irredeemably horrible (e.g. AT&T, Comcast, most airlines etc) with deeper problems than a mere survey can reflect.

I also abandon them when I it appears the survey is poorly designed (ambiguous questions, nothing but marketings, or simply too long).

Re: I write fake online reviews

#79

Post by zeropnc » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

Lol who exactly do you think would assume the burden of the cost of hired product review staff?

Re: I write fake online reviews

#80

Post by oliwarner » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

wool_gather wrote: post #76

oliwarner wrote: post #74

I'm starting to recognise that the Internet —despite all its potential benefits— is a platform to streamline the process of lying to each other. Occasionally political, occasionally commercial, and very often social white lies. The instant access it affords us is being exploited by everybody to affect how we think, what we buy and who we like. It's very rapidly becoming much worse. Machine learning will adapt to peop…

Do you think there's a qualitative change here, though? People have been lying face-to-face, in various degrees, for those and other reasons forever.

Absolutely.

We shop in an environment where we are being told what other purchasers thought about it. "Fake news" (made-up clickbait, not the Trumpian term for non-news) spreads like wildfire, polarising anybody who takes it face value.

You can argue that the exposure to these lies is entirely self-inflicted, but that's how society has moved on. The real question is if we can successfully wean ourselves onto something better.