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FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

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Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#121

Post by bigiain »

kabes wrote: post #104
thow-58d4e8b wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another giveaway is accounts posting multi-sentence comments or reviews within seconds of their previous submissions. How can this get past bot checks is beyond me

For the same reason that on facebook I still get daily friend requests from very sexy women with a brand new profile, 4 friends total, none in common, in a random location in the world with 1 post linking to some dating site. It's because they just don't care. Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent.

> Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent.

Or they're making bank on dating site affiliate fees as a side hustle...

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#122

Post by josefx »

tw04 wrote: post #41
lazide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.

Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?

A lot of reviewers try to be relevant by reviewing new things before they hit the market. That makes the manufacturer the only source of the product and the manufacturers have no reason to provide early access to people writing bad reviews and writing a review a month after everyone else just doesn't attract nearly as much attention.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#123

Post by twofornone »

victor9000 wrote: post #98
beebmam wrote: post #12

There's a whole fraud economy that has emerged in the last decade or so. Its existence has done deep harm to social trust, in my opinion. It extends far beyond just fake reviews of course; it reaches deep into the corrupt business practices and politicians/governments around the world.

Could you be more specific?

It's an open secret that stores on amazon will send out free goods in return for positive reviews. The people "buy" items by the dozen and then resell them as third parties.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#125

Post by 3np »

bigiain wrote: post #121
kabes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason that on facebook I still get daily friend requests from very sexy women with a brand new profile, 4 friends total, none in common, in a random location in the world with 1 post linking to some dating site. It's because they just don't care. Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent.

> Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent. Or they're making bank on dating site affiliate fees as a side hustle...

They don’t need to. The increased time you spend in the site as a consequence is enough of an upside to look the other way.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#126

Post by spoonjim »

eloisius wrote: post #77
spoonjim wrote: post #29

This is just going to further empower the knockoff Chinese brands that make the most use of fake reviews and are mostly beyond the reach of the FTC.

Hopefully the hammer will come down on The Amazons, not indicidual sellers on the platform. If Aliexpress wants to be a junk review haven, who cares?

Why would it come down on Amazon? They’re not writing fake reviews. Fake reviews are commissioned by sellers of shitty products. Sometimes to their competitors in false flag operations.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#127

Post by tdeck »

I have a small side project (a Google Docs plugin) that makes a trickle of money. One of my competitors launched one day and somehow they had 10 5-star reviews already, but the gSuite marketplace said they had only 3 users. One of those users had the same name as the author, but wrote their review as if they'd just stumbled upon it that day. Another literally had the name "Fiverr User" on their Google account next to their review.

I think this has become so common that many people assume it's a necessity of doing business. Maybe it is. Since I don't depend on my project to survive, I choose not to do these things, or even to give discounts to incentivize reviews. Many platforms don't care at all, and don't even try to combat fake reviews.

EDIT: Another thing worth mentioning: the natural review rate for these plugins is really low. Maybe half a percent of users leave any kind of review, at least in my experience.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#128

Post by jacquesm »

floam wrote: post #109
jacquesm wrote: post #107

Fake reviews, likes and stars on github are also used by start-ups to pretend to have more traction than they really have to dupe investors.

GitHub... has reviews? likes?

Fake reviews, likes and (stars on github)

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#129

Post by Broken_Hippo »

zz865 wrote: post #36
Waterluvian wrote: post #7

Random thought: before the Internet were reviews any better? I know there were/are quality reviews like Consumer Reports and such. But were there any crowdsourced reviews? Are we worse off or are we just needing to protect people from their inability to scrutinize a new source of bad data?

I think the point is you didn't rely on reviews. Before the internet you went to the shop and you could actually touch the product, try on clothes, use sporting goods, see how this laptop feels and how fast it works. Now buying online you have to trust reviews to choose what to buy.

Before the internet you went to the shop and you could actually touch the product, try on clothes, use sporting goods, see how this laptop feels and how fast it works.

Sure, if you were going to a store. Catalogs were popular for many decades (if not a full century or more). I definitely remember my parents ordering from JCPenny and Sears catalogs: Music catalogs (near scams) let you buy music you might not hear. I've personally had catalogs for jewelry making supplies before the internet got adequate and safe enough to order from.

And you realistically just had to hope it was good enough. You probably didn't have reviews at all and just had to hope to trust the company or brand - but lets be real, you didn't always have this. Returns either meant driving to a physical store or spending some time on the phone before going to the post office to return.

Re: FTC Puts Hundreds of Businesses on Notice about Fake Reviews

#130

Post by chx »

strogonoff wrote: post #83

A couple of days ago I realised that I started treating vast amounts of followers or positive reviews as a red flag. This first happened as I was looking at a Blackmagicdesign product with staggeringly many 5-star reviews and seemingly zero bound to have poor feedback from bad units, mismatched expectations, courier mishaps, etc.? Those manufacturer could be innocent; outlier where somehow everyone’s satisfied. Still…

Indeed -- the real meat often is in two star reviews. One star is a knee jerk reaction, competitor buying fake review and more, usually useless. But two star typically means someone thought a bit before writing it. I found many genuine problems with products reading two star review -- and more than once, I decided to do buy because the problems were acceptable. This tactic works more often than not but I am worried what happens when this last bastion fails and two stars get flooded with fake BS.
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