111–120 of 182 posts
Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.
Search YouTube for ChatGPT and KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) and you'll see hundreds of videos that show how its done, often with ridiculous promises of thousands of dollars per month in "passive income." Some have even started using Midjourney for the covers or kids books illustrations. The YouTubers are often pumping expensive "masterclasses" to suckers looking to make an easy buck. Amazon does not nothin…
The folding ideas video on these "masterclasses" is really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw This is about using underpaid ghostwriters to write the books, but obviously using AI is just the next logical step. The funny thing is that even before people were using AI, this sort of thing obviously did not work
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even here on HN, people are using ChatGPT to write replies. You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful. Someone else commented here that AI would raise the noise level everywhere and I unfortunately have to agree.
> You can spot it by the very verbose answers that don't say anything meaningful. I've been doing that online for years! Does this mean ChatGPT be taking my hobby away?
It’s also got a different author, and is four pages long. How is this stuff not being automatically detected and flagged for review?
Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.
All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
The degradation in quality has been astonishing.
Search YouTube for ChatGPT and KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) and you'll see hundreds of videos that show how its done, often with ridiculous promises of thousands of dollars per month in "passive income." Some have even started using Midjourney for the covers or kids books illustrations. The YouTubers are often pumping expensive "masterclasses" to suckers looking to make an easy buck. Amazon does not nothin…
Really opens your mind to the amount of grift and scams and shady stuff that happens online.
Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.
Unless you know the category or have a trusted brand, Amazon has become absolutely junk. Search for something where you likely won't know any trusted brands (such as car covers) and you'll get 200 results with exactly the same picture but random brand names. All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images. The degradation in quality has been astonishing.
> All of it is imported crap from Alibaba, of course, and Amazon sellers won't even bother customizing the images.
Which, by the way, is also the literal user experience of AliExpress or Taobao. You forgot to mention widely varying prices.
Whenever I see that (or any Chinese on the packaging), it's a clue to me to go look for the literal same item on AliExpress, usually for a significantly cheaper price (like $1.50 + $3 shipping vs $17, to give a recent example).
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Emergency-Compatible-Re-Char...
Amazon reviews were exploited and devalued years ago. I don't mean there aren't genuine reviews; I mean they've been gamed to the point that they don't really matter anymore. Amazon knows this.
1. Anything less than 4.6 is probably junk. 2. Ignore the 4-5 star reviews, only read the 1-3 star reviews 3. Really read them. 4. A good product will still generally have 2-3% of reviews at 1 star. Less than 2% is a red flag, more than 4% is also a red flag.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but copyright requires the human to have significant original input into the work for it to be eligible. The human can’t just delegate to the animal or AI.
The degree to which a human has to be creative is very minimal. As SCOTUS said in Feist v. Rural: > "the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice" Literally throwing paint at a canvas is enough to suffice. Arranging the prerequisite conditions and coaxing a monkey into taking a selfie is probably enough as well (as long as you don't hire PETA's dumb lawyers who want to argue f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True that. It is so bad that once I sent a irrefutable proof of the seller incentivising reviews, Amazon didn’t take any action at all.
> irrefutable proof Anything coming directly from a customer is probably refutable. For example, the incentives I normally see are on these little cards they include with the product encouraging reviews in exchange for a gift card or something similar. What's to stop a competitor from falsely reporting it using a fake incentive card they created? Amazon could take your report then actually open the product and see if…
Maybe the two of you have different definitions of "irrefutable." If I say, "They ship packages with cards in them that offer a gift card in exchange for a five-start reviews," I would personally call the presence of such a gift card offer, irrefutable proof.
True, my testimony alone is not irrefutable proof, but let's compare to a science paper. It says they have proved that light's path can be bent by gravity. Well, science papers have included outright frauds before, so the paper in and of itself is not "irrefutable proof," but the claims within it can be refuted by attempting to replicate the experiment.
And so it is with the gift-card-offers. A single report or tens of thousands of reports are not irrefutable proof, but they explain how to replicate the result, and if Amazon choose to ignore these reports rather than attempt to replicate what they describe, that is on Amazon.
Ultimately, everything a customer reports can be faked. Businesses that ignore customer complaints because they might be faked, and do so when it "happens to" make them money to ignore customer reports... Are not suffering from being unable to prove that the reports are correct.
They are suffering from making too much money to want to know whether they are complicit in fraudulent behavious on the part of their partners.
Yes it is work to find out if the customer is describing an irrefutable way of discovering whether the customer is telling the truth. It is not the Universe's responsibility to make cracking down on fraud easy: It is Amazon's responsibility to organize their business around not making easy money at the expense of their customers, and if cracking down on fraud is too expensive, it is on Amazon to change their business model.
"It's too much work to crack down on fraud" ought to be rejected as an unacceptable thing to say about any business.