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Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

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Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#201

Post by Fnoord »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #4
JohnTHaller wrote: post #3

It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.

How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.

Seems to only work with Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de. Do those not suffer from fake reviews? Also, I found that buying the full review from "trustworthy" cost 10 USD.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#202

Post by Fnoord »

corin_ wrote: post #51
394549 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate. I think fake reviews are pretty widespread. This Washington Post story ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant... ) talks about how Facebook groups are used trade free stuff in exchange for good reviews. I joined some, and they…

> FakeSpot seems to spend put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings. Presumably this (and the fact that Amazon can analyse them too) leads to a wider spread of fake reviews even on legitimate items, as having fake accounts write generic reviews on a random selection of items they don’t care about would make them harder t…

Presumably blocking spam leads to a wider spread of spam. Presumably having a zero tolerance policy on drugs leads to a wider spread of drugs. Presumably making firearms legal leads to more violence. Its an arms race, but just because of that doesn't mean the fight is worth it or not.

I'd say however that the lack of accountability by Amazon (et al) is the real problem. They should be held accountable for these fake reviews. We need a lawsuit on this.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#203

Post by Lio »

Just bought a rotating bike wheel light from Amazon Marketplace. It's a novelty item that draws images as a bike wheel rotates using persistence of vision.

I don't think anyone has every heard of the "brand" but it was sent from "the UK" allegedly.

It came with a US plug (I'm in the UK) and software on an 80mm mini-cd. That software is riddled with malware. It also has one of those comedy auto-translated user manuals.

Some of these trade offs I can forgive for the price. I can't forgive the malware at any price.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#204

Post by Fnoord »

1024core wrote: post #154

Anecdata, sample size 1. I bought some toy for a toddler. Upon receiving it, I realized that the description was misleading; many of the "pieces" they had listed boldly were just cheap plastic pieces of crap that had no useful functionality. So I returned it, and wrote a 1-star review. A few weeks later, I got an email from them: they were offering $30 if I took down the review. I ignored the email. Several weeks lat…

> Basically, Amazon has no interest in making sure that the reviews are not being gamed. Since the email goes through Amazon servers, they should be able to at least make an attempt at catching such people!

Short-term, no. Long-term, it harms their credibility until they're past being the status quo because people go to alternatives which aren't as popular or infested with this crap. In short, this is good for competition.

But the real problem, as I already wrote in another post, is the fact that Amazon isn't held accountable for this. And if that's currently not possible, it should become by law. After all, they're hosting deceiving misinformation and facilitating a platform for sales. Its easy to get away being the middle man but that doesn't mean its fair.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#205

Post by jvz »

Reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp are a monoculture: everyone sees the same set of reviews and the same ratings. This creates leverage that makes it worthwhile for shills to spend large amounts of effort "infecting" those sites with bad information, since once they find effective ways of doing so it affects everyone.

So the solution must be a review system that works like Twitter, where each user has a unique "view" composed of sources they've selected, directly or indirectly. This diversity would make infection much more difficult and less rewarding for shills and other attackers.

I'm still trying to figure out the best design for such a system. The requirements and usage patterns would be quite different from Twitter's, and I'm not aware of any existing attempts that I can learn from.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#206

Post by marcodave »

combatentropy wrote: post #93
barbegal wrote: post #29

Star ratings in general are just poor. In a 1 to 5 star rating, 3 is average but most people would perceive 3 stars to be above average. People tend to leave reviews only when they are displeased with the product, really pleased with the product or get something in return for making the review, in this case free products. I tend to just filter on reviews that are 2 or 3 stars and use those to work out the cons of the…

When I write a review, I want to give 3 stars to most products, products that are good. I want to reserve 4 and 5 stars for things that exceed expectations. But when I read a review, I want to see 5 stars. Anything less than 5 stars means something was wrong. Why did the reviewer hold back? I think it's mostly because there are so many products with 4-5 stars. It makes products with just 3 stars look bad, even if it'…

I don't remember where, but I read from a blog article that 5-star reviews are unreliable, when used by the general public, due to ignorance on how to properly rate.

The proper way would be to ditch 5-star reviews in favor of just "thumbs up" and "thumbs down", youtube-style

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#207

Post by Toenex »

jvz wrote: post #205

Reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp are a monoculture: everyone sees the same set of reviews and the same ratings. This creates leverage that makes it worthwhile for shills to spend large amounts of effort "infecting" those sites with bad information, since once they find effective ways of doing so it affects everyone. So the solution must be a review system that works like Twitter, where each user has a unique "vie…

Yes, tie the review more personally to the reviewer. I guess this is more like the influencer culture we see a on Instagram and YouTube.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#208

Post by gambiting »

muro wrote: post #194
felix_nagaand wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seller can also just hit and run leaving Amazon with the losses.

Not if they only get the money after the return period is over.

Exactly - any big company will usually pay for the stock 30, 60 or even 120 days after the delivery. I can't imagine Amazon pays their suppliers immediately.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#209

Post by tyu100 »

zavulon wrote: post #102
bpicolo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deluge of low quality, rebranded, foreign built junk is a real problem for Amazon. A search for food scale[0] for example gives you a whole page of similar (many exactly identical with different brand names) pieces of garbage - they have massive, consistent weight drift and drain batteries like it's their job, and yet they're rocking thousands of 5 star reviews. [0] https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps…

This exact issue caused me to use Amazon a lot less. these days, I check Consumer Reports for a review and usually buy their recommendations. Most of the time, still on Amazon - their delivery is still top notch. But - not all the time, as there are now viable alternatives that do 2-day delivery well enough. For example, I started ordering some stuff on Walmart.com. A lot of things that are “prime pantry only” on Ama…

Consumer Reports, Sweethome, Wirecutter. Usually ignore customer reviews and go with Amazon Prime picks for the rest.

Re: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good to Be Believed – They're Paid For

#210

Post by not_a_terrorist »

jvz wrote: post #205

Reviews on sites like Amazon or Yelp are a monoculture: everyone sees the same set of reviews and the same ratings. This creates leverage that makes it worthwhile for shills to spend large amounts of effort "infecting" those sites with bad information, since once they find effective ways of doing so it affects everyone. So the solution must be a review system that works like Twitter, where each user has a unique "vie…

> I'm still trying to figure out the best design for such a system.

Easy answer: distributed consensus, à la Bitcoin.

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