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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

#221

Post by pixl97 »

raziel2p wrote: post #186
locallost wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true of course, but I guess my point is it's better if you have it. I realized this since I know a lot of illustrators, and when I first started seeing them at work I saw a lot of them have the same setup: Macbooks, EIZO monitors, Wacoms etc. At first I thought it was a cult and group think, but eventually I realized they save a lot of time on figuring out what to get. There are probably better things than wha…

There's a risk to this as well, though - marketing becoming more important than quality, and difficulty for new products to make it into the market means stifling of innovation, which can lead to semi-monopolies. In the case of Eizo and Wacom it's probably fine, but Apple are a bit more dubious.

The other risk here is that you'll have '100 million' dollar company that makes a good product, and it gets bought up by one of those multi billion dollar groups designed to suck every bit of profit out of companies like it. The product and support will quickly turn to trash, but peoples momentum will allow the new parent to profit handsomely off the transaction.

Simply put, every single product a company puts out needs subjected to review, and those same products need checked on to ensure the manufacture isn't starting to skimp and change the exact same model number as time goes on.

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

#222

Post by lifeisstillgood »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #187
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> The "fraud economy" was democratized in the last decade but it has always existed. Previously you needed to be rich, powerful, and well connected to have media companies cover your business/product. Now you can buy fake engagement, reviews, upvotes, etc with a few click so everyone does it. Yes. And this is a pattern we are seeing all over - thank you. It's it necessarily good or bad. just more open, democratic,…

"It's it necessarily good or bad. just more open, democratic, cheaper" Thats not like a sensible rule of thumb. If we 'democratise' landmines, it would be clearly bad. This is similar

I get what you mean, but honestly, fake reviews != landmines.

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

#223

Post by Randosaurus »

locallost wrote: post #133

Generally I'd say product reviews are one of those ideas like passwords that work but don't survive introduction to the general public and mass use. The problems of authenticity are obvious, but I've also noticed that people who rely on word of mouth from their friends and colleagues are generally happier. And why wouldn't they be? A colleague tells you this e.g. monitor is perfect for your line of work so you get it…

Just yesterday I had the itch to watch through Trigun.

I was floored when I realized that it was $40 on Amazon Video (streaming), but $22 if I purchase the DVD.

Amazon's costs are __LESS__ for the streaming media than for the company/people selling the physical DVD. Ridiculous doesn't even begin to properly describe that behavior.

If companies are charging premiums for services that cost them less to run, I'm damned well going to be buying in person more often.

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

#224

Post by jeanvaljean2463 »

As a rule, I always check the four, three, and two star reviews since they have the least propensity for a scammer to create and waste time. 1 and 5 star reviews usually are an inane mix of "They're TERRIBLE" or "FANTASTIC" with no additional information, whereas the 2,3, and 4 star reviews will normally go into specifics that warranted the stars being removed. Not only that, but they are normally much fewer in number meaning that a sufficiently popular location with real reviewers will have enough 2, 3, and 4 star reviews to give me a relatively transparent view of the good and the bad that I can read quickly. Mixed into this analysis is to scan for made points rather than worry about the star rating.

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

#225

Post by kabes »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #190
3np wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This really isn't true. Remember that FB has many, many users and (presumably) many, many scammers, so one would expect to see lots of scams. I too get those (messages lately) friend requests, and almost always by the time I read the message the account has been deactivated (when it says FB user). So, overall, I think they're doing a reasonably good job on this particular problem.

My experience is different. I have many times reported a profile like this. Exactly as described above, a child can see it's a scam account. And then a couple of days later got message that after review the profile doesn't violate the community standards.

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

#226

Post by driverdan »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #210
rytcio wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick any big budget game released by a AAA studio or publisher

This seems exaggerated.

Only slightly. The majority of AAA games are released with major bugs now. I now wait at least a year before buying new games.

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

#227

Post by dotancohen »

zinekeller wrote: post #208
raziel2p wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a risk to this as well, though - marketing becoming more important than quality, and difficulty for new products to make it into the market means stifling of innovation, which can lead to semi-monopolies. In the case of Eizo and Wacom it's probably fine, but Apple are a bit more dubious.

> In the case of Eizo and Wacom it's probably fine I can quickly name up their primary competitors in this space, and for some reason (note: definitely anecdotal) I do see that for them, for the last ~5 years they are now being fiercely competed from both budget and professional angles. > but Apple are a bit more dubious. Me too. While Apple is definitely stumbling right now, unlike the previous two there is no serio…

Listen to me, consider this an "online review".

Just buy a Dell (for the money) or Thinkpad (for longevity) laptop. I haven't had a problem installing a Debian-derived distro on either brand since 2007 or so. Wifi, external monitors, printing, sleep, everything just works.

I have heard people have trouble with bluetooth and with fingerprint readers, but I don't use them so I cannot comment.

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

#228

Post by dotancohen »

threeseed wrote: post #181
wly_cdgr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop trying to make no passwords happen. It won't happen

It sort of has happened for Apple users. For all sites whenever you signup for a website a random password is generated. And then when you re-visit the site you use FaceID/TouchID to automatically pre-populate the password. At that point it really isn't a password in the traditional sense. And for an increasing number of sites it bypasses this step entirely and just lets me use FaceID/TouchID.

  > really isn't a password in the traditional sense.
Can it be sniffed out with XSS? Can it be sniffed out over the wire on the university Mitm'd network? Can it be stored on the server in plain text?

The user experience might have changed, but many of the security aspects have not.

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

#229

Post by jerf »

Randosaurus wrote: post #223
locallost wrote: post #133

Generally I'd say product reviews are one of those ideas like passwords that work but don't survive introduction to the general public and mass use. The problems of authenticity are obvious, but I've also noticed that people who rely on word of mouth from their friends and colleagues are generally happier. And why wouldn't they be? A colleague tells you this e.g. monitor is perfect for your line of work so you get it…

Just yesterday I had the itch to watch through Trigun. I was floored when I realized that it was $40 on Amazon Video (streaming), but $22 if I purchase the DVD. Amazon's costs are __LESS__ for the streaming media than for the company/people selling the physical DVD. Ridiculous doesn't even begin to properly describe that behavior. If companies are charging premiums for services that cost them less to run, I'm damned…

Keep an eye out in general. Streaming is not always a deal. Physical media is quite often cheaper, and if you know how to rip, much more convenient as a result because you can get a DRM-freed copy.

Streaming does seem to be slowly getting higher quality, better codecs are probably helping, but I've still noticed there are times when a good DVD encode will still beat an "HD" stream, because even if the "HD" stream has a "higher resolution" the DVD can afford a higher enough bitrate to even compensate for its now quite-out-of-date codec. Streaming companies are still motivated to trim their stream quality as far as the customer will bear, and your fellow customers will bear quite a lot, it turns out. And if you can get a bluray it'll certainly beat any stream anyone will serve you. I haven't compared many 1080 Blurays to 4K streams, I think I've only gotten to do it twice, but the 1080 Bluray won handily both times. (I don't have a 4k bluray player.)

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

#230

Post by cmeacham98 »

dotancohen wrote: post #228
threeseed wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sort of has happened for Apple users. For all sites whenever you signup for a website a random password is generated. And then when you re-visit the site you use FaceID/TouchID to automatically pre-populate the password. At that point it really isn't a password in the traditional sense. And for an increasing number of sites it bypasses this step entirely and just lets me use FaceID/TouchID.

> really isn't a password in the traditional sense. Can it be sniffed out with XSS? Can it be sniffed out over the wire on the university Mitm'd network? Can it be stored on the server in plain text? The user experience might have changed, but many of the security aspects have not.

I'm pretty sure that poor passwords ("password1!") and password reuse combined dwarf basically all other password-related security issues, thus getting users to use a randomly generated password on every website is a magnitude of order more secure.

On top of that, in cases of XSS or a MiTM you've probably already lost and no password alternative will help you.

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