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How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

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Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#41

Post by welcomebrand »

deepGem wrote: post #37
justonepost wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the value of a fake review is so high no ML will ever be able to defeat it. The only way to fix it is with trusted reviewers but there a lot of products on there and only so many trusted reviewers.

How do you mean ? From what I've observe all fake reviews tend to fall into a pattern. Usually a mix of broken sentences and hyperbole. I find the positive fake review patterns far simpler to detect than the negative review patterns. Nonetheless, a decent sentiment classifier can be modified and used to classify fake reviews, the fake positive ones at least.

They all pretty much start with the disclaimer "I was given this for free but that didn't influence my 5* amazing review that follows"

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#43

Post by barry-cotter »

oldcynic wrote: post #32
pbasista wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No doubt a fake Lacoste would disintegrate in a fraction of the time of a genuine shirt. Such a statement has no grounds to stand on. There are non-genuine items which are of the same or better quality than the genuine ones. You cannot just put them all in one bin.

> You cannot just put them all in one bin. Amazon do, that's the problem. As you provide no citations either, your assertion seems to have no more grounds. The chances of counterfeit being better quality are so vanishingly rare as to be headline worthy.

On fakes being of high quality I imagine it varies by market and supplier. If real Calvin Klein underwear is better than the thirty I got in Thailand four years ago it’s made of angel feathers and adamantium.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#44

Post by jraby3 »

deanCommie wrote: post #34
thisisit wrote: post #4

Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…

> but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. I would have thought that on Hackernews of all places people would recognize the scale that is involved with a site like Amazon and recognize that fixing this problem is far from trivial. I'm sure Amazon is taking it very seriously - when have they ever shown anything but "obsession" about positive customer experiences. But it is hard, and it will take time to do it ef…

I disagree. There seems to be so much low hanging fruit to at least reduce the problem but they haven't taken even the smallest steps. This is because they're prioritizing revenue, volume, and selection over fraud prevention.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#45

Post by jraby3 »

deanCommie wrote: post #34
thisisit wrote: post #4

Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…

> but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. I would have thought that on Hackernews of all places people would recognize the scale that is involved with a site like Amazon and recognize that fixing this problem is far from trivial. I'm sure Amazon is taking it very seriously - when have they ever shown anything but "obsession" about positive customer experiences. But it is hard, and it will take time to do it ef…

I disagree. There seems to be so much low hanging fruit to at least reduce the problem but they haven't taken even the smallest steps. This is because they're prioritizing revenue, volume, and selection over fraud prevention.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#46

Post by monkeydust »

So here is a pitch you could make for the tech companies to get into finance. Simply replace with either Amazon or Google

1. Advisor: Retail investors are moving rapidly to passive tracking instruments such as ETFs, can help educate investors on how to allocate their funds to this asset class based on individual risk/reward profiles. can make better sense of all the data available and become the 'ultimate' robo-advisor.

2. One View: is in position to own account aggregation and build up an incredible view into the spending/saving habits of the general population in the developed world. Initiatives such as PSD2 in Europe will help fuel the growth in aggregation in the next few years. Going forward beyond simple read-only aggregation,combined with Advisor and write-APIs to to financial institutions, can allocate my funds to the best products across multiple different institutions in real-time.

3. Bank: With my investments taken care of through Advisor and One View whats left is a utilitarian bank account to manage my free cash flow on a daily basis. Something practical and highly functional without the fuss that offers features such as peer-to-peer FX swapping at mid rates when I go on holiday. This is where could create the challenger bank people have been anticipating.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#47

Post by personjerry »

deanCommie wrote: post #34
thisisit wrote: post #4

Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods and fake reviews. One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. In which case, allowing them to handle money seems like a recipe for disaster. As for the Ant Financial comparison, I find it hard to believe that Amazon is not utilizing the reserves it gathers by se…

> but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing any thing. I would have thought that on Hackernews of all places people would recognize the scale that is involved with a site like Amazon and recognize that fixing this problem is far from trivial. I'm sure Amazon is taking it very seriously - when have they ever shown anything but "obsession" about positive customer experiences. But it is hard, and it will take time to do it ef…

I disagree, I feel like around 30% of HN works at a big company, but most are at startups nowhere near the scale of Amazon.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#48

Post by hndamien »

lsc wrote: post #8
tjr225 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods ans fake reviews. I flat out won't buy from Amazon unless I'm already in the market to get something that I know is cheap and may or may not work- which turns out is not very often. Because of this I very much doubt the reality of the retail apocalypse in the long term.

It is by far their biggest problem. Personally, I find 'ships and sold by amazon' to be a brand I trust; outside that? yeah, it's like buying from a shady ebay seller. Personally, I think amazon needs to distance themselves from those third party sellers; if it's hard to tell the difference between amazon and joe rando, the amazon brand is going to become worth significantly less, and they will not be able to charge…

I agree. I think JD are taking a much better approach here and seem to care much more.

Re: How Amazon Can Blow Up Asset Management

#49

Post by virgilp »

fujiters wrote: post #24
virgilp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of ways, of course: A. Going global: a lot of those "good retail brokers" are US-only. Sometimes it's dumb - I already have an ETrade account & signed all the paperwork including stuff relevant for my foreigner status... But ETrade will only let me trade my employer's stock, nothing else. B. Bundle stuff that others can't match - e.g. Prime C. One account, with good actual security (few appreciate that…

Brokers are often limited in which countries they'll accept clients from, but that's to avoid all the overhead of filling the appropriate tax forms to each government (and maintaining the knowledge of what the rules in each country are).

That's exactly my point - Etrade already does all the tax forms for me, I don't understand why they won't allow me to have a full account. Probably some "blanket policy".

As for Amazon, I would expect them to eventually expand globally if they were to offer such services (which is not what I expect from most US brokers).

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