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Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

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Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#21

Post by burnt-resistor »

xnx wrote: post #9

Did Fakespot work? I can't see how it would stand a chance against LLM generated reviews without even having the log (keystroke?) data that Amazon does.

Better than nothing. Not sure how well it worked or if it used any particularly advanced AI similarity checker or sentiment analysis.

It's pretty easy to spot obviously unrelated reviews that talk about or include pictures of completely different products. What's hard to spot is similar reviews written by bots or people paid to write as many reviews as possible using similar language, especially when there are thousands of reviews.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#23

Post by SamuelAdams »

Dwedit wrote: post #20

With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.

I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option.

If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#24

Post by doppio19 »

pogue wrote: post #18

I did search around looking for alternatives and the landscape isn't great. There's ReviewMeta.com which doesn't work 100% of the time and is no longer actively maintained as far as I can tell. TheReviewIndex.com I didn't find to be very helpful, as it doesn't index all products and sometimes just refuses to check on listings you ask it to. It seems to have some kind of subscription model, but they don't list the pri…

I mentioned it briefly in the blog post, but this is exactly what I'm working on! Essentially, a spiritual successor to Fakespot that combines LLM analysis, more traditional ML techniques, and rule-based heuristics to detect fake reviews. I'll likely go the "subscription with generous free trial" route, to avoid meeting the same fate as Fakespot.

I'm actively working on a prototype and have a landing page at https://www.truestar.pro if you want to get notified about when I launch.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#25

Post by aspenmayer »

Dwedit wrote: post #20

With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.

There’s also the strangely still-not-even-admitted-as-problematic Amazon item page referent shuffle, where one item is for sale on a given page, and the item sold by that page points to one item by a given seller. The reviews of this item are spammed positively, and then the item being sold on that page is changed by the seller, yet the reviews follow the page, not the item sold at the time the review was placed.

This combined with Amazon’s commingling of inventory of Amazon corporate sourced items and third party seller items results in a status quo in which, when purchasing an item on a page operated by the first party manufacturer and/or first party supply chain, the Amazon item picking system may still fulfill that order via inventory sourced by third party Fulfilled by Amazon sellers who knowingly and unknowingly are selling counterfeit products. You never know what you’re going to get with Amazon, and neither does Amazon or the third party sellers. It’s insane.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#26

Post by derekp7 »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #23
Dwedit wrote: post #20

With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.

I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option. If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.

They also tell you if a product has a high return rate, which is helpful.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#27

Post by alwa »

aspenmayer wrote: post #25
Dwedit wrote: post #20

With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.

There’s also the strangely still-not-even-admitted-as-problematic Amazon item page referent shuffle, where one item is for sale on a given page, and the item sold by that page points to one item by a given seller. The reviews of this item are spammed positively, and then the item being sold on that page is changed by the seller, yet the reviews follow the page, not the item sold at the time the review was placed. Thi…

It sure does get there quick though. And heads back to the warehouse for free if you don’t like it.

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#28

Post by yablak »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #23
Dwedit wrote: post #20

With removal of reviews that the seller doesn't like, there's really no point to taking Amazon's star ratings or reviews seriously. It's all a big lie.

I’ve started resorting to the “x bought this month” metric instead. If a product works for thousands of people and they continue to buy 500+ units a month, clearly it is a good option. If it does end up being a bad buy, Amazon typically has a 30 day return policy for most items. Use that and get something else.

Pretty sure that metric can be gamed

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#29

Post by aspenmayer »

alwa wrote: post #27
aspenmayer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also the strangely still-not-even-admitted-as-problematic Amazon item page referent shuffle, where one item is for sale on a given page, and the item sold by that page points to one item by a given seller. The reviews of this item are spammed positively, and then the item being sold on that page is changed by the seller, yet the reviews follow the page, not the item sold at the time the review was placed. Thi…

It sure does get there quick though. And heads back to the warehouse for free if you don’t like it.

Counterfeit items are contraband and may not be legal to be shipped or mailed, as they are evidence that a crime may have occurred. To return counterfeit items for material benefit to the seller or agent in order to receive a refund is possibly helping the fraud to continue by allowing the destruction of property/evidence. I advise all folks who suspect counterfeit goods to report them to the FTC and their local police department to get a police report, and insist that the police take the item(s) as evidence, then provide the police report to Amazon to facilitate the refund, instead of returning the potential contraband to the contraband dealer for them to sell again or for them to destroy the insufficiently misleading fake item.

Scammers are somehow using Amazon itself as an A/B test for if your fakes pass muster, from what I can tell, and everyone loses but Amazon and the bad guys. How long must this continue?

Re: Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

#30

Post by drekipus »

bentcorner wrote: post #11

> Mozilla couldn't find a sustainable business model for Fakespot despite its popularity I don't know if it's fair for me to armchair quarterback, but still - what was their business model when they decided to do the acquisition? From the outside looking in barely did anything whatsoever. I browse Amazon using Firefox extremely often and I don't recall seeing any helper UI pop up. Even so, what would have been their…

I can almost assure you, the plan is to run it into the ground,
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