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The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

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Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#121

Post by supertrope »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #117
kfarr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer Reports has entered the chat

Consumer Reports has well known biases though, which colors their reviews. For example, they tend to rank American car companies unfairly low. Their vehicle issue score isn't weighted - trouble linking phone to infotainment is the same as engine exploding. Cars with more tech -> lower scores, even if they're mechanically flawless.

Honda has moved down their rankings due to reliability problems with their infotainment systems. Lumping transmission failure at 50,000 miles with some audio system breaking is too coarse.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#122

Post by supertrope »

Mtinie wrote: post #41
princevegeta89 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one trusts these review companies actually. They simply exist to extort entities that get reviewed either to remove negative reviews or promote or even auto-post fake positive reviews. Yelp is a classic example that did this for years.

Can you foresee a scenario where a review site could legitimately exist without turning to synthetic reviews, dark UI patterns, or outright brand extortion?

Yes. With a paid subscriber base and no advertising their interests would be aligned with the reader's. If you're not paying for the review they will ultimately build loyalty toward their funders.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#123

Post by Mandatum »

shippintoboston wrote: post #3

I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…

Glassdoor removed all of my reviews after submitting a negative view about 1 company. Previous reviews had been mostly positive or just neutral with provable facts.

Having seen their internal Blind, social Slack channels and culture vs. the Glassdoor reviews, and then submitting my review which really "went against the grain" of Glassdoor, it was clear there was something going on. I just didn't care enough to find out.

As these systems age, I think they're all missing one feature - "what are ratings or reviews from the past 6 months".

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#124

Post by [deleted] »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #39
camhart wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one trusts these review companies actually. Most people do trust them, but shouldn't.

Actually you are right, sorry. I was exaggerating but it is true that it is mostly the naive/average users of internet that do place any significant credibility in online reviews

[deleted]

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#125

Post by swayvil »

Kretinsky wrote: post #104
druvisc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same is happening to Google Maps. I and other reviewers had left negative reviews for Cosuno Ventures GmbH as it's an incredibly toxic and horrible place to work in. I received a take-down notice from a German Google Maps review employee saying that Cosuno is claiming it's a false review and they don't know how who am I. Even though I worked at the company for 4 months with the CTO and had responded to the e-mail wit…

I went to a pediatrician near where I lived. Long story short, she was very toxic, making ultimatums and giving what was revealed as dubious practice. I consulted other similar pediatricians, who all gave me radically different answers than hers. As a result, I chose to write a detailed review explaining why I thought she was unprofessional, citing examples. Of course, my review got nuked. Same happened with a photo…

>can see my review with my account, but no one else can.

Your review got shadow-removed. That's a new one on me.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#126

Post by sunpazed »

In my last role, I built an education reviews site at scale — challenge is remaining objective given that your audience are actively airing the dirty laundry of your paying customers. Commercially it didn’t stack up, so we had to monetise the traffic through display ads.

Same case with Glassdoor — dissing paying customers through your audience is never good for business.

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#127

Post by jiveturkey »

alecthomas wrote: post #107
jiveturkey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> verifiable receipt lol. the current amazon scam is to purchase the product (ship to a random address to defeat “common address” detection) then leave the fake review

Interesting but not relevant here - they require a photo of a physical receipt, and they're hand reviewed. Anything is scammable given enough effort though, no doubt.

that’s exactly the amazon scam, executed with a verified receipt and “hand reviewed”. or did you mean, manually moderated? that’s no obstacle.

for amazon the receipt is guaranteed authentic as the product will have been verifiably purchased on amazon. for a 3p site receipts can be trivially fabricated

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#128

Post by ShadyOperation »

swayvil wrote: post #125
Kretinsky wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a pediatrician near where I lived. Long story short, she was very toxic, making ultimatums and giving what was revealed as dubious practice. I consulted other similar pediatricians, who all gave me radically different answers than hers. As a result, I chose to write a detailed review explaining why I thought she was unprofessional, citing examples. Of course, my review got nuked. Same happened with a photo…

>can see my review with my account, but no one else can. Your review got shadow-removed. That's a new one on me.

[dead]

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#129

Post by princevegeta89 »

alecthomas wrote: post #96
Mtinie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you foresee a scenario where a review site could legitimately exist without turning to synthetic reviews, dark UI patterns, or outright brand extortion?

https://www.productreview.com.au/ is the only site I've ever seen that does a good job at user reviews. Each review has to be accompanied by a verifiable receipt. Here's their operating model, which sounds like a mix of paid brand manager subscriptions and advertising: https://support.productreview.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/36000...

Btw how do they detect fake receipts, if at all?

I'm wondering as there are quite a handful of fake receipt generators on the internet

Re: The underground economy of Glassdoor reviews

#130

Post by briHass »

randycupertino wrote: post #66
shippintoboston wrote: post #3

I used to work at Desktop Metal which was (at the time) a pretty small startup here in Boston. When I left, I wrote a pretty negative review on Glassdoor about what I felt was a toxic work environment. At the time I submitted my review, there were probably about 10 reviews for the company. The very next day after my review was posted, about 7 positive reviews popped up. Obviously pretty suspicious behavior, but when…

At a healthcare tech startup I worked at for every negative review we got management made us write three positive reviews. The owners daughter would get all of her friends from college to write more and more positive reviews. It was so obvious, any fake review written by HR will always have "keep doing what you're doing!" in the "advice to management" section. Like, even a moderately happy employee will actually have…

I swear the 'keep doing what you're doing' must either be the standard HR planted review (I wasn't invited to the HR conference where they learned that!), or it's GD's own spam for pay. I've seen that too frequently at toxic jobs for it to be coincidence.

Luckily, just like Amazon reviews, it's pretty easy to determine worthwhile info from how specific and balanced it is. The aggregate scores are obviously worthless, because either shills or spurned employees taint the mix.

I enjoy when there are responses from the business: that can often show egotistical management that thinks their poo doesn't stink.

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