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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

#261

Post by heromal »

acheron wrote: post #242
skunkworker wrote: post #147

Honestly fake reviews are to the point where naturally I’ll just google “$product_name Reddit” and get some more honest reviews than anything I find on Amazon. Yes there will be astroturfing, but you can also get into some more niche communities with more real feedback and discussion.

I guess if you're interested in the opinions of college students and 23 year olds. The real trick is finding an obscure forum on your topic. That keeps off the kids and the astroturf.

Depends on the subreddit. Most of them are, as you say, filled with kids. The problem with that is if you ask for a product recommendation, they interpret that as "what's the cheapest X", which gets pretty annoying depending on what you're trying to buy. However, reddit in my experience is great with niche things with smaller subreddits, like /r/hometheater and /r/fatfire .

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

#262

Post by KajMagnus »

HPsquared wrote: post #143
KajMagnus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this indicate that by not fixing the fake reviews problem, Amazon can, whenever it wants, get rid of a troublesome competitor? (since the competitors are sort of forced to use fake reviews)

It's selective enforcement, in a different context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

Thanks, interesting reading, and some from there linked topics as well

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

#263

Post by irrational »

Moru wrote: post #89
irrational wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the Internet? Other than advertisements, any information about a product came from word of mouth (family and friends) or from magazines like Consumer Reports. How would crowdsourced reviews even be generated or disseminated? The only way for large groups of people to talk to each other was in person.

Buying reviews has long been a thing. Snake oil sales persons were standing on markets selling their bottles of oil, they paid people to come up and "buy" a bottle and do a review in front of the crowd.

Yes, but a crowd isn't anywhere within orders of magnitude to what we see on the Internet.

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

#264

Post by willis936 »

cortesoft wrote: post #250
willis936 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace "free" with "valueless" and the prospect of competition looks brighter.

Does it? It doesn't matter if we know the reviews aren't as good, people still don't seem willing to pay for good reviews. Many companies have tried, but I haven't heard of any success stories yet.

Plenty of people are. CR is still in business. However, there is an issue with the quality of CR dropping in recent years. Why pay for a service that is getting worse?

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

#265

Post by Kiro »

heromal wrote: post #260
Kiro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Do you have any example where this happened?

This really is something you just Google, it's not uncommon at all. I just Googled "broken game release" and all I saw were examples. Cyberpunk was a recent high profile one.

First result is this: https://www.goliath.com/gaming/10-games-that-were-broken-at-...

Some of my all-time favorite games in that list so I definitely do not agree that those companies should be fined. I've gotten extremely good bang for the buck considering the thousands of hours I've put in.

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

#266

Post by kexx »

antihero wrote: post #259
darkerside wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big reason I think influencer marketing is picking up steam. Everyone knows that reviews and SEO can be gamed, with little to no consequence. If an influencer tells you something is good, at least their reputation is on the line. If they continually sell out, they kill the golden goose. So, as dumb as it sounds, influencer reviews are higher signal to me than typical online reviews.

> at least their reputation is on the line I don't think it is though, the sort of people who follow influencers generally aren't blessed with the greatest critical thinking skills.

Also most of them are willing to sell themselves out for $200 in a moment

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

#267

Post by lazide »

ratww wrote: post #167
lazide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.

I have friends who used to be in the music instrument journalism industry, and the common approach was to only review what they liked. They got a guitar or synth that was bad? They would just tell the manufacturer they would rather not say something bad. Of course, after a while readers started asking questions, so the answer was to review products from companies not advertising in the magazines.

It seems like this is a recipe for being hungry. The only products they reviewed were products that no one advertised in their magazine?

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

#268

Post by lazide »

astura wrote: post #193
ytpete wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wirecutter (now part of NY Times) is another that doesn't accept freebie products, if I recall. They do use affiliate links, so they have incentive to want you to buy _something_, but no incentive to give any particular brand or model a biased review.

YMMV but "review site with referral links" is a category of site I very much wish to avoid.

As long as it's a generic referral program (Amazon?) in general I find it at least somewhat ok - I can see how they're getting paid, and I can assume (maybe?) they aren't getting a special kickback to sell that particular product over another one at Amazon or whatever.

When it's seller specific affiliate programs? It's all just spam basically.

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

#269

Post by devwastaken »

Kiro wrote: post #113
devwastaken wrote: post #87

Good. Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Fine any company selling products with "warranty void if removed" stickers. Mass shut down fake sale websites that do not sell the product imaged. I want to see the ftc breaking down doors and deleting entire companies off the face of the earth for their illigal practices. I can dream of course.

> Now also fine game companies releasing broken products. Do you have any example where this happened?

Elite Dangerous: Odyssey. Couldn't even get a refund because it took more than 2 hours to get the game to even play, still was broken. Company stole $60 from me and somehow never fined.

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

#270

Post by strogonoff »

slfnflctd wrote: post #192
sundvor wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gotten to the point where if you leave an honest review of a bad experience you might face a defamation lawsuit. I wish I was joking, but: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/before-you-write-that... Also leaving anything other than a 5 star review is basically criticizing the company and guaranteed to upset. This is absolutely rubbish; an e.g. 3/5 should be the baseline for acceptable service, and 4/5 reserv…

> 3/5 should be the baseline for acceptable service, and 4/5 reserved for exceptional quality My first experience of this was in rideshare reviews, as a driver. Anything below five stars and it counts as a mark against you, for which eventually you can be deactivated . Then I started seeing this behavior copied everywhere. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I agree with you on what it should mean, but unfortun…

For that reason I think it’s worth drawing a distinction between rating service by very small businesses (taxi drivers, family-run guesthouses, etc.) vs. a mass/retail product.

Rating the former tends to be 1) personal, 2) having much influence over individual’s livelihood, and 3) much more dependent on my preexisting expectations. If there was something I didn’t like, I try to not give any rating instead of rating poorly unless there was an exceptional issue.

Rating a product, especially by a bigger company, 1) does not necessarily criticise the company itself (I can still admire it while objectively having bad experience with a unit) and 2) has much less influence over company’s overall success (my review is probably a drop in the ocean), and 3) I tend to think of it as more objective than rating a service (compared to a service provided by a human, when evaluating a physical product there’re absurdly fewer variables and you’d be better informed about what you’re supposed to expect based on tech specs).

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