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Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

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Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#61

Post by benologist »

bduerst wrote: post #56
FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

Crowdsourcing the spam identification would be a great move. Unfortunately it would also reveal to customers that there are fake reviews, causing them to lose confidence in and lessen the value of reviews. They may then read reviews and subconsciously be evaluating if the comment is fake, not if the product is a good buy. If you hid the "Irrelevant Review" button under a dropdown it might work better, since it wouldn…

They do this - Was this comment helpful? Click no and you can report it along with a brief message. It's either ineffective or doesn't do anything at all, can't tell.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#62

Post by wiredfool »

bduerst wrote: post #56
FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

Crowdsourcing the spam identification would be a great move. Unfortunately it would also reveal to customers that there are fake reviews, causing them to lose confidence in and lessen the value of reviews. They may then read reviews and subconsciously be evaluating if the comment is fake, not if the product is a good buy. If you hid the "Irrelevant Review" button under a dropdown it might work better, since it wouldn…

The effectiveness of reviews is predicated on the population of 'helpful' reviewers being greater than the population of spam reviewers after some level of filtering.

It's unclear if a crowdsourced flag would tip the balance of helpful vs spam in any useful way for categories where there's already a unhelpful level of spam.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#63

Post by FilterJoe »

benologist wrote: post #61
bduerst wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crowdsourcing the spam identification would be a great move. Unfortunately it would also reveal to customers that there are fake reviews, causing them to lose confidence in and lessen the value of reviews. They may then read reviews and subconsciously be evaluating if the comment is fake, not if the product is a good buy. If you hid the "Irrelevant Review" button under a dropdown it might work better, since it wouldn…

They do this - Was this comment helpful? Click no and you can report it along with a brief message. It's either ineffective or doesn't do anything at all, can't tell.

"not helpful" and "looks fake" are not the same. A review can be not helpful for many reasons, including:

* one or more incorrect facts

* goes on and on about one minor point while ignoring major stuff

* too brief

* reveals spoiler without a warning

Etc.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#67

Post by WalterBright »

bduerst wrote: post #54
nanidin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably apply ML techniques. Similar to how spam is classified - build a classifier that determines the likelihood of a review being bogus, then flag it for human review if it exceeds a certain threshold.

They probably already have this, to be honest. Some of the fake reviews used keywords from the book title, probably in a learned attempt to game the classification.

Interestingly, Amazon can mine a great deal of the reviewers' histories to determine fake reviews. For example, a longtime customer of Amazon would get a higher "trustworthy" score for reviews than one who signed up 2 weeks ago.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#68

Post by Super_Jambo »

FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

As a complete a side do you have any "Focused Value" investing books you would recommend.

I think you were probably being down voted for being overly technical though yes.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#69

Post by ivanr »

FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

I don't think it's that easy. My book on Amazon currently has one 5-star review that's just one word and two 5-star reviews with two words each. I am the author and the publisher, and I know for a fact that these reviews are not fake. But they probably come across as fake. I think that there some people who just want to share their opinion of a book without making an effort to write a good review.

Personally, I'd prefer to have only reviews backed up with an explanation. If a book is good, tell me why. If it isn't good, I'd like to know why you think it isn't. That's the only way to make the next edition better.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#70

Post by FilterJoe »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #68
FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

As a complete a side do you have any "Focused Value" investing books you would recommend. I think you were probably being down voted for being overly technical though yes.

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher is the best book I've read about the process of getting to intimately know one specific company. It was written long before the phrase "focus investing" was coined. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger frequently recommend this book.
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