I only trust reviews of persons I personally know. At least I know the person exists. However, many of these FB likes seem to be over-motivated by some campign trick, but I also know already who are usual suspects there, so can filter them out.
Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
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Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#82I've made it a practice to run ReviewMeta (https://reviewmeta.com) on any unfamiliar item I'm considering purchasing.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#83Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone. There. Problem solved.
This is half of an idea... people still want/need guidance on purchases.
High quality, curated, independent reviews is probably something that most people would enjoy and appreciate.
That said, the current system is fairly worthless, and what little worth it has is based on hacking it by looking at a specific subset of reviews.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#84Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
Disruptive solution proposal: Get rid of the review system entirely. Stars, comments, user pictures; eliminate all of it. For everyone. There. Problem solved.
This comment isn't entirely without merit. If Amazon could guarantee the genuineness of every product and description, and delivery times, is there any need for star ratings? Reviews are better because it's easier to differentiate between fake and real reviews for now ( as fake reviews usually contain grammatically incorrect sentences, multiple copies with different names etc )
That's what we have done at the marketplace I'm running in the UK. There are no seller ratings and users are encouraged to share feedback.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#85Right now probably some remote indian village is employing people (like mechanical turk ironically on amazon as well) to write X amount of reviews per day sort of like moderation. In the not so distant future someone will do a GPT3 version of this. Time to reinvent the reviews.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#86Some sellers simply give out free units for good reviews.
Lots of them are offering a gift card for a review to purchasers - which seems slightly less scammy as you’re unlikely to leave a good review of a crappy product for a $5 gift card.
I had this happen, left a negative review mentioning the pay-for-review scam, and had the review removed by Amazon because it's "off topic". I don't know if it's just aligned incentives, but Amazon doesn't seem to care about this kind of review stuffing at all.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#87Amazon loves fake reviews as long as they are 5 star. The more it looks like people buying stuff using amazon are happy, the better that marketing is for Amazon. Look at all these people who are so happy to be buying stuff on Amazon, so much better than the alternatives. Amazon could clean this up and then watch the average drop. From the removal of the fake fives but also it makes it look more "socially accpetable"…
My mother-in-law no longer buys anything of significance from Amazon after being burned with counterfeit materials.
I carefully check reviews, use fakespot, etc.
There is a point where the eroding of trust will be significant enough to affect the bottom line. Eventually most people know to not trust Amazon reviews, soon it will be.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#88Here's an idea that would never work: how about a financial incentive straight from Amazon for leaving negative reviews?
Let's imagine a universe where Amazon does away with the star rating system and replaces it with a pro/con "tag" list. (e.g. "high quality" "smells bad" "broke quickly"). They then only allow reviews from verified buyers of an item. Amazon then contacts some percentage of said buyers proportionate to the number of reviews the item has has/how recently it was listed (to establish a baseline) and offers a small account credit for a reviewer to clearly state at least one thing they didn't like about the item, requiring a response other than "nothing". This would identify trends or common failure points. The more negative reviews a product has, the higher the reward that Amazon hands out. Scammy sellers would have to consistently "beat Amazon's offer" to get fake positive reviews.
In this hypothetical universe... would sellers setup shell accounts to purchase their own inventory and tank their other products' reviews for Amazon credit? Or would they buy out their own inventory to increase the ratio of positive to negative reviews? Would the cut that Amazon takes for using their platform outweigh the cost of paying off buyers/purchasing their own inventory? Would the cost to Amazon be worth the increased customer engagement?
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#89Of course they are, it's not like Amazon really cares much. With all the power of AWS and deep learning etc., identifying fake reviews should be a piece of cake if you are Amazon. It doesn't affect the bottom line, so why bother.
I guess I feel more comfortable commenting on this vs such posts about Google (my employer) because I don't have to worry about leaking anything important but this is absolutely not a piece of cake. Anyone who has worked on planet scale anti-abuse systems knows this is a very tough and never ending problem. You think there are obvious signals for good or bad - the 0.01% cases where this does not hold up turns to 20 m…
Yes, using AI to spot fake reviews seems like a fools errand to me.
However, why doesn't Amazon only allow those who have purchased to leave reviews?
And to ban any company offering monetary or equivalent incentives to leave reviews?
I suggest they are not even trying to tackle the problem.
Re: Fake Amazon reviews 'being sold in bulk' online
#90I recently got an email offering 50% off a seller's products if I left a good review. This is happening on all marketplaces, not just Amazon. The only way I see to truly solve the problem is only allowing verified buyers to leave a review.
Forward this to amazon customer service.