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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

#231

Post by SamuelAdams »

dylan604 wrote: post #34
SamuelAdams wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you know that 500 people didn't buy a scam product this month? I put as much faith in the X people bought this as I do the X people have this in their cart. It's all a way of trying to stoke FOMO

You don’t. However, that risk is mitigated with a simple, easy to use return policy, where you actually get your cash back (not airline vouchers or points or made-up things to keep you in the ecosystem).

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

#232

Post by driverdan »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #69
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…

Amazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.

Most of the Chinese crap sold on Amazon is identical to what you find on AliExpress and Temu marked up 50-200%.

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

#233

Post by csa »

hattar wrote: post #200
soderfoo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There’s an old law school adage that A students become professors If I were a law school professor, I’d probably also say that.

> If I were a law school professor, I’d probably also say that.

Or more likely a jaded B-student who has been around the block a few times.

The reason this works is that the C-students include students who have always known that their social network would facilitate them being rainmakers, while B-students are often middle-class try-hards who don’t have the right social network and don’t have the social skills to develop the right one.

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

#234

Post by yifanl »

spicyusername wrote: post #194
thoroughburro wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience. All it takes to lose civilisation is for everyone to think as selfishly as this.

Nah, civilizations been running on this attitude since it's inception, and here we are. There's never been a magical golden age where people were any different than they are.

The difference is mostly that people with this mindset were less empowered to enact upon it.

But we've democratized fraud now.

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

#235

Post by pkolaczk »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #163
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.

Amazon is great for returns. Buy $50 something from aliexpress, doesn't work, you can't do anything. Seller wont refund directly, you need to send the item back... to china... and fill out export forms and pay more than $50 for registered mail. Amazon? Doesn't work? Doesn't matter why, here's the return label, we'll refund you the moment we get the return.

The thing is, you paid for that in the price which is often 3x more for the same thing you could get on Aliexpress. I bought plenty of stuff on Aliexpress and I had issue only once when I got something different than I ordered. Overall even if I lost on that one purchase a bit, I saved plenty of money on other purchases. And they have a lot of stuff that's simply unavailable elsewhere. Even if they sold me some counterfeit transistors, those must be really good counterfeits, because they measure fine.

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

#236

Post by pkolaczk »

throwaway_20357 wrote: post #153
varispeed wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something is not remotely up to standard, do a return. I know it's bad for the planet, but it is rather painful for them and probably only stick there is.

It is even worse for the planet when scammers keep flooding the market with low-quality products, a majority of people become accustomed to low quality and short replacement cycles, and the minority who cares about quality and product safety has to go through the returns process today but has no high quality options left anymore tomorrow as there is no longer a market for them.

The stuff on aliexpress is not low quality. I mean, some for sure is if you look for the cheapest items, but there is plenty of solid quality stuff there as well.

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

#237

Post by kouru225 »

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…

… Wanna send me a vacuum?

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

#238

Post by OJFord »

driverdan wrote: post #232
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.

Most of the Chinese crap sold on Amazon is identical to what you find on AliExpress and Temu marked up 50-200%.

Yeah but honestly unless it's a repeat purchase, I'll pay it for the customer service (and ordering experience frankly) being similarly up 5,000-20,000%.

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

#239

Post by PUSH_AX »

doppio19 wrote: post #24
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://…

I really don't think this is going to work well, like how is an LLM going to know someone paid me for my review?

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

#240

Post by PUSH_AX »

There is one clear route to solving this problem and I already pay money to get it, it's an independent third party consumer review site.

They are good at objectively evaluating consumer products, they simply buy all the main models of a thing and review them all. I trust them (which is very important in this space). I happily pay for this service.

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