I write fake online reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: I write fake online reviews

#51

Post by MisterTea » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

When researching the first thing I do is A. ignore 5 star reviews and B. read the 1 star reviews first. That's probably the best way to figure out if what you're buying is a piece of trash or a legit product that works. One star reviews are usually written by pissed off customers. I also don't usually leave reviews unless it's a one star piece of garbage that really pisse dme off.

Amazon is plagued by this. I just looked up earbuds on Amazon and clicked on a pair on the first page of results. It's a brand I've never heard of with a design that looks silly, perfect. 473 reviews, ALL 5 star, ALL posted April 13th, multiple from the same users. The laughable part is many are for different products like screen protectors and "lightning wires" (lol). What a joke. How Amazon expects to stay in business is beyond me.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#52

Post by mannykannot » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:45 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

If reviews could be trusted, you would be doing more to help consumers than the business owners. Independent reviews have been a staple of commerce long before it went online.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#53

Post by viraptor » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:45 PM UTC

teddyuk wrote: post #33

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

This - also things like "you can create a PR to change the microsoft doc's site" - FFS microsoft make so much money but the users are expected to maintain the bs documentation. This makes me so mad

I don't get it. You have two paths if you know what's wrong with the docs: 1. tell them it's wrong, 2. tell them how to correct it (pr), 3. ignore it and let yourself or your team run into the same issue in the future.

The amount of money ms makes is irrelevant to any of those points. The docs writers will make mistakes - this is unavoidable. The question is then: do you care whether your coworker sees the same error in the docs.

I'd rather fix their docs than leave that to some random question on an unofficial forum that you have to Google with very specific keywords.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#54

Post by jamestanderson » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:47 PM UTC

nathan_long wrote: post #50

Planet Money did an episode ( https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/06/27/623990036/epis... ) about fake reviews and talked with the creator of ReviewMeta ( https://reviewmeta.com/ ), which attempts to distinguish real reviews from fake ones based on things like similarity and clustered posting. Of course, if it has or gets traction, fake reviewers will adapt, just like spammers do.

This is the first I've heard of ReviewMeta, but I've been using Fakespot[0] for a couple years now and always reference it when buying on Amazon.

[0] https://www.fakespot.com/

Re: I write fake online reviews

#55

Post by ATsch » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:59 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

I'm not sure who first made this observation, but it's incredible how slowly, everything becomes labor (in the abstract sense of work performed for someone elses profit). With social media, we spend more and more of our free time working for companies for their profit. It is essentially, the ultimate form of labor from a capitalist perspective— where not only the effects, but also the act of labor itself has been externalized from the cost.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#56

Post by anderskev » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

One thing I've noticed recently is that the number of reviews that are for a completely different product seem to be skyrocketing. This was probably the final straw for me when it came to trusting Amazon reviews, and now I usually look to YouTube to get info. Granted, most of the YouTube reviews are sponsored but it seems like the reviewers are almost always up front about this and it helps to see someone physically using the product.

Given that the review problem seems to be growing worse, I wonder what the priority of fixing this is internally at Amazon. Even if I turn to another source for reviews I'll still probably purchase from Amazon if the price is lower, so I wonder what effect this actually has on their bottom line?

It seems like the only real solution is to make it so time consuming to write a review that the economics of paying someone to do so no longer make sense. I'm not entirely sure how this could be done. Maybe have a longer length requirement? Force a reviewer to upload photos? Someone once commented here that making the reviews ephemeral or decay in importance over time could be a solution, which I thought was an interesting idea.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#57

Post by sureaboutthis » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #51

When researching the first thing I do is A. ignore 5 star reviews and B. read the 1 star reviews first. That's probably the best way to figure out if what you're buying is a piece of trash or a legit product that works. One star reviews are usually written by pissed off customers. I also don't usually leave reviews unless it's a one star piece of garbage that really pisse dme off. Amazon is plagued by this. I just lo…

I wouldn't look at the one star reviews either. I usually start with the three star reviews and glance at the four and two stars unless there is a preponderance of one.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#58

Post by skj » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

Do you value reviews written by other people?

If not, some certainly do, and you're providing a free service to them.

Re: I write fake online reviews

#59

Post by tzfld » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

>Why provide free services to billionaires?

So you don't contribute content to large social networks neither, isn't it?!

Re: I write fake online reviews

#60

Post by strider12 » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #28

I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide free services to billionaires? Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers. These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

Why are you giving your valuable insights even now