Telco Astroturfing Tries To Bring Down Reviews Of Susan Crawford's Book

Pretty convincing analysis. Many of the one star reviews follow a similar template: "I am a [profession X here]" (a jeweler, a freelance video editor, a professional truck driver, a pharmacy technician, etc.). Weird all of them, usually from rural areas, go out of their way to declare what they do for a living. Not to mention a majority of these "customers"--this is their only review on Amazon at all.

Hmm...go to http://www.amazon.com/Captive-Audience-Telecom-Industry-Mono...

  149 Reviews
  5 star:	 (99)
  4 star:	 (8)
  3 star:	 (4)
  2 star:	 (6)
  1 star:	 (32)

Yes, there's some astroturfing going on. It seems to be at both ends of the scale though. The other possibility besides Telco astroturfing is that some of the negative reviews are left by people who dislike the Obama administration (which Crawford formerly worked for). A negative mention on a conservative blog might have attracted readers with a negative opinion to the Amazon.com page.

I wish for reviews + social. You know, somehow combining the power of the web with the good old process used to find out whether something is good or crap - asking the people you know.

A review by someone 2 links away from me is very unlikely to be spoofed and I reckon that even 3 links away from me (this is probably a large enough pool?) would be quite trustworthy.

The most recent 46 5 star reviews were written after the Techdirt article was posted, and many of them refer to it:

JakeI: The ONE STARS reviews posted here are actually people who WORK for these TELECOM companies and want to keep making fortunes off of misguiding people. Ignore them, report them, and move on.

a reader: Just a note to the paid consultants who have been discovered due to the spike of one star reviews from brand new accounts, I'm buying the book thanks to you.

vge: Susan P. Crawford has written an excellent, 5-star quality book, don't listen to the 1-star telco astroturfers.

Sid Wright: An injustice has been done. This book was given 0 stars by fake reviewers when it actually deserves a real, honest score.

Of course, those 5 star "Astroturfing sucks" reviews are just as useless as the 1 star "I am a rural truck driver and..." reviews, but with the Techdirt article as a cause, at the very least we have an alternate explanation. I see no reason to assume we're dealing with a second astroturfing campaign.

I should add that even if those 46 comments are all legit-but-useless 5 star reviews, then there's still 53 left that were made before then, which I lack the time to look more deeply into. Your conclusion might be accurate for those.

My personal favourite review:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1150DW8W7EM1/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...