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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

soderfoo wrote: post #182
bsenftner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is why some law firm, heavy with Ivy league predators, does not eye Amazon's fraud engine as a pot of generational gold to be taken? Sure, it will take some effort, but that's a huge pot of gold just sitting in the open with this blatant fraud in broad daylight.

There’s an old law school adage that A students become professors, B students go to work for C students. It's similar for "shark attorneys," who will typically hail from tier 2 and 3 schools. They're the aggressive hustlers.

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by [deleted] »

like_any_other wrote: post #159
colonial wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is awful when it comes to striking down accusatory customer reviews. Last year I (like a fool) purchased some chunky thru-hole MOSFETs on Amazon. Lo and behold, despite the datasheets promising a few amps with 3.3V at the gate, I only got a few milliamps. Obviously counterfeit - but no matter how hard I tried or how much indirection I employed, Amazon always took down my review warning others of this verifiabl…

So Amazon is complicit in fraud.

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by dankwizard »

bsdz wrote: post #139
dankwizard wrote: post #46

It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review. You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE. Then an expensive option I was suprised happened…

I'm struggling to believe you have a dozen new vacuum cleaners in your shed. It's quite an extraordinary claim. Are you willing to share some evidence?

Sure. It's cold, rainy, and midnight but here's what came up in my email when searching "vacuum". It's not all, and you can see some I didn't reply to but -

https://imgur.com/a/F0u9xVM

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

#204

Post by JadeNB »

_thisdot wrote: post #161
dns_snek wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least for what I buy from aliexpress, it hasn’t been infiltrated by fake reviews. Aliexpress just fake it themselves. Search for anything, sort by the number of orders, open the product page for the first result. Next to the number of sales there's going to be a tooltip saying "Sales and ratings are calculated based on all identical products from the platform." Under reviews there's going to be a message saying…

I’ve never bought from AliExpress, but I’m pretty sure everyone does this. Customers are mostly looking for product reviews, not reviews on sellers. For example, take a mouse from Logitech. Even if five sellers sell the product, it’s better to show product reviews for every item. Isn’t that so?

> I’ve never bought from AliExpress, but I’m pretty sure everyone does this. Customers are mostly looking for product reviews, not reviews on sellers. For example, take a mouse from Logitech. Even if five sellers sell the product, it’s better to show product reviews for every item. Isn’t that so?

I'd sure like to know if I'm buying counterfeits, and, unless the product is identified as "Counterfeit Such-and-such" or the platform can otherwise identify them, it doesn't help me for reviews of the counterfeit product to be lumped in with reviews of legitimate ones. (And, if the platform can identify the counterfeits, then it should be taking them down, not showing me cleverly mingled reviews.)

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

#205

Post by kevincox »

brookst wrote: post #181
like_any_other wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Amazon is complicit in fraud.

It’s fun to be outraged but a more nuanced read is that Amazon is stuck battling all kinds of fraud and it can be hard to differentiate. They also have a massive problem with fake bad reviews where a competitor spams competing products to try to increase sales of their own. They have so many flavors of fraud that it’s very hard to get it right consistently at scale. Not am Amazon fan, and please let’s not do the Redd…

The problem is that they have an obvious incentive to err on the side of positive reviews. Because if every product on the site has a 1 star review few people will buy anything. But if most of them have 5 stars people will be much more eager to purchase.

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

#206

Post by AlienRobot »

timcobb wrote: post #176
dankwizard wrote: post #46

It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review. You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE. Then an expensive option I was suprised happened…

> I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. Why would you want 12 vacuums? What are you going to do with them? Isn't that a senseless amount of redundant objects to horde? Don't you want room for other things in your shed?

>Don't you want room for other things in your shed?

To be fair, it's vacuum so it doesn't occupy space.

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

#207

Post by dankwizard »

dankwizard wrote: post #203
bsdz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to believe you have a dozen new vacuum cleaners in your shed. It's quite an extraordinary claim. Are you willing to share some evidence?

Sure. It's cold, rainy, and midnight but here's what came up in my email when searching "vacuum". It's not all, and you can see some I didn't reply to but - https://imgur.com/a/F0u9xVM

Example of the contents of an offer:

https://imgur.com/a/q634ty4

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

#208

Post by zulban »

zdragnar wrote: post #80
quitit wrote: post #77

Some online retailers (such as galaxus for those in Europe) include return statistics on the sale page against comparison brands as well as price history graphs. This helps stamp out two of the core complaints about amazon: fake reviews and fraudulent discounts.

If you look around, you'll see products on Amazon occasionally marked as "frequently returned". It has steered me away from a few purchases. Unfortunately, they haven't really countered the "keep creating new accounts" drop-shippers. Some categories are especially bad about this- if you find a back massager that you like, buy it in bulk right away, because the model and probably seller won't be around by the time you…

If you have to buy a back massage in bulk as backups, doesn't that means it's crap quality? Are your standards that low?

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

#209

Post by crazygringo »

colonial wrote: post #62
dawnerd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some company paid be 100 bucks to change my review to be positive so they sent the money via PayPal no problem then I changed the review to say they paid me to write a glowing review and of course Amazon ended up removing the review for being harmful to their customers

Amazon is awful when it comes to striking down accusatory customer reviews. Last year I (like a fool) purchased some chunky thru-hole MOSFETs on Amazon. Lo and behold, despite the datasheets promising a few amps with 3.3V at the gate, I only got a few milliamps. Obviously counterfeit - but no matter how hard I tried or how much indirection I employed, Amazon always took down my review warning others of this verifiabl…

You can't use the word "counterfeit" or suggest that. But you can absolutely give 1 star and explain you only got milliamps. I have a bunch of 1 star reviews. I've never had anything taken down except when I used the word "counterfeit". Also, I get it -- how do you know if it's actually counterfeit, or genuine but low-quality? There are a bunch of things I've bought that I suspected were counterfeit, then went to my local store and discovered no, the authentic item is just crap.

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

#210

Post by dankwizard »

stronglikedan wrote: post #78
dankwizard wrote: post #46

It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up. You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review. You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE. Then an expensive option I was suprised happened…

Leave honest reviews (not saying you're not) and don't feel dirty. You'd actually be helping.

They were mostly honest - I just always included something like 'an upgrade from my last one' but these clones are all so similar and all effective. Can do the whole house on a single charge, strong enough, has the low projecting light to highlight dust, high number of attachments.

Does the job. I'm no vacuum connoisseur (Which you think I'd be after all of these) but none were scammy products.

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