FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website • Hacker News Board

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#171

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #105

vonmoltke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. Why? How do we "know" they have the data? How do we "know" that can act on whatever data they have? People here seem to ascribe a level of omniscience to tech giants that I'm not certain they deserve.

Mostly because the dozen-or-so data-analytics services that AWS provides are all architecturally of the "scratching-your-own-novel-itch" shape rather than the "best-practices, well-known-standard" or "bug-for-bug-clone-of-the-thing-some-other-cloud-vendor-is-doing" shape. Amazon built DynamoDB, acquired Redshift, etc. to use them.

None of that tells me they have identified the correct metrics to collect in order to identify the extent of the problem, to identify the specific listings or reviews that are fraudulent, or to use in a system to suppress the fraud. They certainly have the infrastructure to do it, but that is the (relatively) easy part.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#172

Post by bluedino » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #139

ams6110 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well? What's wrong with Consumer Reports? Sign up, pay for it, done. Why does valuable information that takes a lot of time and expense to produce need to be free? That attitude is the root of most of what's wrong with the web today. s/internet/web/

Consumer Reports tends to rate heavily on things I don't much care about, like initial reliability (which for most modern products is more than fine) while almost ignoring things like ACTUAL performance and ergonomics.

They're also biased. If they generally give the winning nod to brand X, even if brand Y comes ou with a superior product, they'll still give brand X the nod.

It works the same way when brand X has sub-par releases.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#173

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

thatoneuser wrote: post #62

vonmoltke wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The funny thing is, you know Amazon has the data and must be optimizing in the short term. Why? How do we "know" they have the data? How do we "know" that can act on whatever data they have? People here seem to ascribe a level of omniscience to tech giants that I'm not certain they deserve.

Are you seriously proposing Amazon doesn't realize what's going on with their review systems?

No, as the sibling's post indicates I am suggesting they don't have sufficient data to bound or correct the problem. It's a problem of getting the correct data, then extracting signal from that data. People here seem to be trivializing that part.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#174

Post by snarf21 » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #6

There are so many fake reviews on Amazon that the "average" stars for a product are no longer reliable indicators of quality. Especially for cheap electronics (read: headphones), products that have only been listed for a month somehow have hundreds of 5 star glowing reviews. When I do research nowadays I have to deliberately select the 1 star reviews to see if there is a real issue that's glossed over by the paid rev…

The issue is that reviews for the same SKU are shared across all sellers. That doesn't even address the fact that some products have quality issues per color. They also mix the inventory together for efficiency in logistics. Once you do that, you admit that you don't care because you can't get the pee out of the pool.

It seems like it should be easy to track the content coming in with an additional barcode sticker. You scan that barcode when the order is fulfilled and based on the user review/return/etc. ban that seller for counterfeit goods. It just seems like Amazon isn't interested in solving this because it becomes fairly trivial. I think the long term goal is to erode confidence in now Amazon branded products as they have different SKUs. Additionally, most people are lazy and won't bother returning something < $25 and will just pitch it but Amazon still collects their fees.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#175

Post by bluGill » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #153

duado wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative: Target.com. Once you try it, you’ll never go back. Amazon is still where I buy a wireless mouse, or a phone holder for my car, but big electronics come from B&H or Newegg, diapers and kids toys and baby food comes from Target.

The 'alternative' is just every other e-commerce store. Once a lot of other larger companies figure out how to do cheap and quick delivery ... what advantage will Amazon have? People think Amazon has a leg on Wallmart. I'm not so sure! Wallmart has a 'distribution centre' (aka a store) only 5 miles from every American! Wallmart already has the wheels greased for the things we really need. Wallmart can sell razors, gr…

The part walmart hasn't figured out is how to get people to think of going to walmart.com in the first place.

I used it when my printer broke and I needed one. Same day pickup for free. They list dozens of printers, but it was easy to sort on ones that were in stock in my local store so I could get same day pickup. I went just a few minutes out of my way, and had a working printer when I got home from work. Sure on amazon I might have bought a different printer with some nice to have feature, but I wouldn't have got it today. Target is just as easy (maybe easier).

I don't know why anyone would look to Amazon first anymore. Sure for obscure things amazon (or ebay), is more likely to have it. Even then I go to obscureProduct.com where the staff knows something about their products and I can read their buyers guide and get a good brand (They probably are biased to selling some brand which is worth more profit to them, but they at least keep me away from the junk brands which is in itself worth far more to me than a few buck extra profit to them)

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#176

Post by ReviewMeta » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #138

elektor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend that you copy and paste the Amazon link to https://reviewmeta.com/ and https://www.fakespot.com/ to see how many of the reviews are actually legit.

Any browser extensions that use reviewmeta or fakespot so that I don’t have to cut and paste the URL? Ideally I’d like to simply filter out all fake reviews and recalculate the stars rating.

https://reviewmeta.com/blog/extensions/

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#177

Post by b3b0p » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #6

There are so many fake reviews on Amazon that the "average" stars for a product are no longer reliable indicators of quality. Especially for cheap electronics (read: headphones), products that have only been listed for a month somehow have hundreds of 5 star glowing reviews. When I do research nowadays I have to deliberately select the 1 star reviews to see if there is a real issue that's glossed over by the paid rev…

Amazon went from my go to reliable source of basically everything that wasn't perishable to not. I used to have packages from Amazon coming weekly and daily and took full advantage of my Prime membership. Now, I can't even remember the last time I bought anything from Amazon. I'm simply afraid I'll get a fake, even if it says ship and sold by Amazon.

I hope Amazon sees this and many similar complaints. I feel the greater population will catch on to this in due time and they could very well fall from their throne. In fact, if they don't, I hope they do.

In the meantime, I'm more than willing to pay more get products directly from the manufactures and stores in person (e.g. Apple, Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, Nike, etc...).

Not sure how this affects their other holdings such as Zappos.

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#178

Post by omouse » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

kanox wrote: post #121

omouse wrote: post #46

FINALLY. "In addition, the order requires the defendants to notify Amazon, Inc. that they purchased Amazon reviews of their Quality Encapsulations Garcinia Cambogia capsules and to identify to Amazon the purchased reviews." Online reviews don't work without trust . Maintaining trust is done by Amazon in this case, but sometimes the job is too big, especially at this scale. Amazon needs better tools perhaps, but the j…

> FINALLY Identities in comment sections have always been fake and anonymous and this is a good thing even if it results in occasional spam reviews. Legal action to enforce real IDs would make the internet worse . I don't get it. I'd expect highly technical forums to value anonymity despite its drawbacks but I'm continuously disappointed.

Identities in comment sections have always been fake and anonymous and this is a good thing even if it results in occasional spam reviews

Comments are not the same as reviews.

This is why Amazon, for example, has "verified purchase" status for reviews. Reviews can influence a buying decision and are integrated as part of a platform. Comments can influence a buying decision but they live outside the platform and can always be made anonymously on any other platform.

The issue in this case was someone purchased fraudulent reviews on someone else's platform where the platform's integrity is severely diminished through that fraud.

I support anonymity, as I said I'm in favour of less government interference in markets, but in this case, we need a bigger stick because Amazon and other marketplace platforms don't quite have the technical tools to fight fraudulent reviews.

Also I don't think there's a mention of using real ids?

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#179

Post by ReviewMeta » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #13

potatofarmer45 wrote: post #6

There are so many fake reviews on Amazon that the "average" stars for a product are no longer reliable indicators of quality. Especially for cheap electronics (read: headphones), products that have only been listed for a month somehow have hundreds of 5 star glowing reviews. When I do research nowadays I have to deliberately select the 1 star reviews to see if there is a real issue that's glossed over by the paid rev…

Or reviews that were transferred over from other products. Here's a case in point: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MH9HPTR Over 3000 reviews... most of them for products completely unrelated to the one on sale. I see reviews for a bicycle lamp, a phone screen protector, and a voltage converter. This seems like a bug. Surely Amazon shouldn't allow sellers to transfer product reviews over from other products?

We call this "Review Hijacking" and have a bit alert that pops up on our report when detected. It's not a bug, it's a loophole that sellers are exploiting. They are taking advantage of the "product variations" feature that's supposed to be used for listing products of different styles together in one listing (size, color, format, etc).

However these sellers are essentially stealing old, expired listings of products and collecting all the reviews associated with them to pump up their rating and review count.

This has been going on for over a year. I really don't understand how Amazon hasn't figured out a way to close the loophole at this point...

Re: FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an Indie Retail Website

#180

Post by crankylinuxuser » Wed, Feb 27, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

elteto wrote: post #112

function_seven wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution to this has been to find a subreddit that's devoted to the product in question. If there is one, then I'll check the sidebar there, read through some posts, search for a few keywords. Basically spend 15 minutes researching. Reddit still has shills and astroturfs, but for a lot of niches they're often aggressively moderated out of the community. To go along with your umbrella example: Unfortunately /r/umbr…

This is what I do as well. I append the word “reddit” at the end of all my google product searches if I want to get an honest, high quality review.

The other thing I do, in the hardware realm, is to see what open source and hacker efforts have been done.

If the thing is open and understood, then I will have a much better time. If not, it will probably soon go on the abandoned trash heap.