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Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

npr.org

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Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#41

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

AlbertCory wrote: post #22
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not super difficult to only show reviews you are highly confident AREN'T completely fake. Instead they prioritize having as many reviews as possible - when possibly a majority of them are fake. And the cost is - the reviews are completely meaningless. All they care about is engagement - and if users have to dig through reviews manually trying to sort out signal from noise - that's engagement to them, not an awfu…

Amazon adds "verified purchaser" if the reviewer bought the book. Which means my glowing review (if I wrote one) of https://www.amazon.com/Bill-Dave-Hewlett-Packard-Greatest/dp... might look fake, since I borrowed it from the library.

Verified purchaser is not a good signal, and they know it.

It's a way to force the fraudsters to buy from Amazon.

Don't fix the problem - make more money from it. That's what companies do.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#42

Post by danaris »

itsoktocry wrote: post #21
siva7 wrote: post #14

How about the platforms get hefty fines in the billions for fake reviews? I’m sure Amazon would solve this problem in a day then

Fined by who, and for what? What a strange comment. Why would the government police such matters?

The FTC, I would imagine—this is definitely within the purview of regulating trade and advertising.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#43

Post by caesil »

siva7 wrote: post #14

How about the platforms get hefty fines in the billions for fake reviews? I’m sure Amazon would solve this problem in a day then

How do you define "fake"? Review bombing is generally real people with real opinions. It takes advantage of the fact that a) it's mostly impossible to verify someone has read a book, and b) most people don't read, and c) most people who read don't leave a review, so anyone motivated to review gets an outsized voice.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#44

Post by bluish29 »

Some people are suggesting verification that the reviewer actually bought the book like what is done on amazon.com itself. It is different as Goodreads is not amazon.com, the goal at least what people are using it for) is social network that is built around people organizing their reading lists, sharing it with others and follow what their friends are reading. In addition to reviews to know more about books and people's reactions.

Some of the problems with this proposal

1- Books borrowed from friends or libraries 2- Book bought from different platforms or stores 3- Books downloaded from from the internet legally (or illegally)

Most of my readings are not books that amazon can verify I actually owned the books and I usually write reviews if I want to share it with my friends on Goodreads. That would be hard to implement and if so, I think personally I will stop using Goodreads, probably with most of the people I know.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#45

Post by dahart »

itsoktocry wrote: post #21
siva7 wrote: post #14

How about the platforms get hefty fines in the billions for fake reviews? I’m sure Amazon would solve this problem in a day then

Fined by who, and for what? What a strange comment. Why would the government police such matters?

Maybe the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and for fraudulent and deceptive practices? There’s plenty of precedent, and Amazon’s failure to do anything about fake products and fake reviews, if not active encouragement of fraudulent behavior, is a real economic problem where we the consumers pay the costs.

https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#46

Post by thenerdhead »

chongli wrote: post #40
thenerdhead wrote: post #26

Maybe start with showing reviews that are verified or somehow legitimate. There is a problem on both ends of inflating and bombing titles. I personally cannot stand the former where publishing teams will buy or fake mass amounts of reviews to play into the NYT bestseller formulae. It is fairly easy to tell an ad hominem in a "review bomb" in my experience. Usually it relates around politics or something controversial…

Review bombing isn’t just negative. People also review bomb their competitors with positive reviews in order to get their competitors’ listings taken down. How do we stop that? The harder we police against fake positive reviews, the more we incentivize this sort of anticompetitive sabotage.

I mean some straight-forward ones might be...

Accounts need to verify themselves somehow.

Accounts should be old enough before contributing reviews.

Accounts should only be able to review X amount of titles an hour/day/etc.

Moderators should have tools to identify influx of reviews and decide mitigation strategies.

Moderators should be able to put up a banner on a title that may be review bombed so the community can report suspicious reviews.

Etc.

These aren't honestly policing much. Just general common sense for these platforms. Also heavily needed on many other platforms that get spam in similar ways.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#47

Post by beej71 »

bluish29 wrote: post #44

Some people are suggesting verification that the reviewer actually bought the book like what is done on amazon.com itself. It is different as Goodreads is not amazon.com, the goal at least what people are using it for) is social network that is built around people organizing their reading lists, sharing it with others and follow what their friends are reading. In addition to reviews to know more about books and peopl…

And brushing scams.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#48

Post by sublimefire »

It is important to stress that this is a problem related to the sales of the new titles, not the established and time tested ones. There is a huge competition as we have more and more books published each year as well. Also, show me at least one marketplace where the reviews are 100% legitimate.

I think publishers and authors want to free ride such platforms to reduce the marketing spend but then they face trolling and there is nothing to do but cry (but the monetary effect is unclear).

Instead they could invest more into multichannel ads and build alternative platforms for the readers to check what the book has inside. But yeah lets depend on amazon and just wait until it will start asking for money to mitigate review bombing ;)

Besides who reads the new titles when there are thousands of amazing time tested books?

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#49

Post by mistrial9 »

like many others who recall the early days of the open Internet, I am disgusted by the practices and business model of sites like Goodreads for the last decade+. Now they cry "foul" and ask for help? cry me a river.. better self-organizing reader circles are the answer.. "winner take all" is working out just as many envisioned.. ensh*tification

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#50

Post by Ekaros »

ceejayoz wrote: post #7
jasondclinton wrote: post #4

This is such a bad headline. The story is mostly about an author posting fraudulent reviews to promote her own work.

Re-read the article, or at least the second paragraph. They (and some buddies or sock puppet accounts) were low-ranking other authors’ books, specifically targeting authors of color. They’ve admitted this publicly. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/13/cait-corrain-p... > “I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to dow…

Sounds like type of growth hacking that start-ups are sometimes celebrated for... Boost your own brand while lowering competition...
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