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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

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 selling gift cards on its platform. Those too are excess reserves to be paid to suppliers once customers utilizes and buys something from a supplier.

tjr225 9y ago
> 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.
- lsc 9y ago
  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 the premium that I'm sure their investors are expecting.
  - hndamien 9y ago
    I agree. I think JD are taking a much better approach here and seem to care much more.
gaius 9y ago
One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier Why would one think that?
- WJW 9y ago
  Especially because AI/ML can used to generate fake reviews as well.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Generate fake reviews in AWS then post them in the main site, the perfect crime
fergie 9y ago
> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.
- fujiters 9y ago
  Not everything related to quality can be easily identified by the end consumer. I trust major food manufacturers to have products without high levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. I don't trust that counterfeit food manufacturers are ensuring the same.
- dazc 9y ago
  '...Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.' I don't know about Lacoste, but of the brands I do know about, they do a pretty good job on their own of undermining that rationale.
- baybal2 9y ago
  >Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste. And so does Alibaba, except for it is in China and is outside of US IP enforcement regime. If Amazon were not to do a great pivot towards 3rd party sellers back in 2012-2014 and do the same thing Alibaba does, we could have been talking about Alibaba swallowing Amazon's online retail business by now. Alibaba is a type of company you can do nothing about, yet it can do a lot of things about you, and I can throw a couple examples for you: Paypal - they used to have a "partner agreement" with Alibaba, but the moment they began to carve into eBay's domain, Paypal's board was foolish enough to antagonise them. Alipay was the result of all of above, as well as Paypal's almost complete loss of Chinese market, and few others where Alipay made inroads. Apple - they had pretty much to bribe Alibaba along with Sony to have their products delisted and prohibit trade in refurbished electronics on their platform (which was also eating into Apple's sales big big time). Also, Alibaba strongarmed Apple into letting them send payments and selling virtual goods without paying "Apple tax." Knowing that, Tencent and few other big Chinese dotcoms followed the suit, which gave them enormous commercial advantage against foreign competitors for in-app payments. And all of above is on a minute scale of societal impact in comparison how Aliexpress singlehandedly nuked a big big chunk of the brick and store retail industry in the former bloc countries. (Alibaba makes more profit in Russia than in all other foreign markets combined)
cm2187 9y ago
The solution to fake reviews is simple. Just ignore all reviews that aren’t verified purchase. Still leaves some room for manipulation but much less.
- justonepost 9y ago
  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.
  - cm2187 9y ago
    But amazon could hide by default reviews where no purchase has been made through amazon.
    - vanillaboy 9y ago
      What stops the seller from buying his own merch from different accounts? The only way to fight fake reviews is by adding a filter that would only show ones by 'trusted reviewers'. Even then, those can be bribed. In the end, we're back to square one.
  - deepGem 9y ago
    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.
    - welcomebrand 9y ago
      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"
- 9y ago
deanCommie 9y ago
> 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 effectively without completely blocking all 3rd party sellers on the site.
- personjerry 9y ago
  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.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jraby3 9y ago
  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.
- jraby3 9y ago
  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.
  - rubinelli 9y ago
    I've seen this in other companies. It's like Amazon had a bad revenue addiction. They can't go cold-turkey and cut every suspect seller in the marketplace, because that would cause a large impact on their quarterly numbers. But if this goes untreated, it will drive out good sellers and destroy consumer confidence.
  - TheBeardKing 9y ago
TekMol 9y ago
It's important to seperate Amazon the market place and Amazon the merchant here. Amazon is a market place where you can find all types of merchants. In this role, it's not so much Amazons issue what these merchants sell. It's similar to how there are all types of websites running on AWS. Amazon is not responsible for their content. Amazon is also a merchant on their own market place. I would expect Amazon and other big name merchants to usually sell you genuine products.
jeffreyrogers 9y ago
I don't really use the reviews on Amazon any more for making decisions. Typically if I'm buying something on Amazon it's a book, and I already know I want it because someone I trust recommended it, or it's some random thing I want like speakers or a bike tool or something and I just research what to buy online before I go to Amazon.
bootlooped 9y ago
This comes up every time Amazon is a topic on HN, and yet, from the article: "Amazon is rich with the most important resource in asset management: trust. The firm earned the highest reputation ranking in the U.S. in a 2017 Harris Poll. It was ranked as both the most influential and most trusted company in a 2016 survey by SurveyMonkey. It was the only company to land in the top 5 for both categories." If the above is true, then counterfeit goods are probably not ultimately a significant problem for them.
Zigurd 9y ago
Amazon sells gift cards. You can even specify one-day shipping on gift card. Amazon does a wholesale business in Amazon credits that have the effect of lowering transaction prices. For example, Coinstar machines don't charge a fee if you take an Amazon credit in return for your coins.

tjr225 9y ago

> 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.

lsc 9y ago
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 the premium that I'm sure their investors are expecting.
- hndamien 9y ago
  I agree. I think JD are taking a much better approach here and seem to care much more.

gaius 9y ago

One might think that with the rise of AI/ML catching fake reviews and counterfeits will be much easier Why would one think that?

WJW 9y ago
Especially because AI/ML can used to generate fake reviews as well.
- gaius 9y ago
  Generate fake reviews in AWS then post them in the main site, the perfect crime

fergie 9y ago

> Amazon has a serious problem with counterfeit goods Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.

fujiters 9y ago
Not everything related to quality can be easily identified by the end consumer. I trust major food manufacturers to have products without high levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury. I don't trust that counterfeit food manufacturers are ensuring the same.
dazc 9y ago
'...Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste.' I don't know about Lacoste, but of the brands I do know about, they do a pretty good job on their own of undermining that rationale.
baybal2 9y ago
>Or you could say that Amazon is highlighting the comparative lack of quality of branded goods. A Lacoste shirt is so easy to replicate at a fraction of the cost, that Amazon, by its very nature undermines the entire rationale for buying Lacoste. And so does Alibaba, except for it is in China and is outside of US IP enforcement regime. If Amazon were not to do a great pivot towards 3rd party sellers back in 2012-2014 and do the same thing Alibaba does, we could have been talking about Alibaba swallowing Amazon's online retail business by now. Alibaba is a type of company you can do nothing about, yet it can do a lot of things about you, and I can throw a couple examples for you: Paypal - they used to have a "partner agreement" with Alibaba, but the moment they began to carve into eBay's domain, Paypal's board was foolish enough to antagonise them. Alipay was the result of all of above, as well as Paypal's almost complete loss of Chinese market, and few others where Alipay made inroads. Apple - they had pretty much to bribe Alibaba along with Sony to have their products delisted and prohibit trade in refurbished electronics on their platform (which was also eating into Apple's sales big big time). Also, Alibaba strongarmed Apple into letting them send payments and selling virtual goods without paying "Apple tax." Knowing that, Tencent and few other big Chinese dotcoms followed the suit, which gave them enormous commercial advantage against foreign competitors for in-app payments. And all of above is on a minute scale of societal impact in comparison how Aliexpress singlehandedly nuked a big big chunk of the brick and store retail industry in the former bloc countries. (Alibaba makes more profit in Russia than in all other foreign markets combined)

cm2187 9y ago

The solution to fake reviews is simple. Just ignore all reviews that aren’t verified purchase. Still leaves some room for manipulation but much less.

justonepost 9y ago
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.
- cm2187 9y ago
  But amazon could hide by default reviews where no purchase has been made through amazon.
  - vanillaboy 9y ago
    What stops the seller from buying his own merch from different accounts? The only way to fight fake reviews is by adding a filter that would only show ones by 'trusted reviewers'. Even then, those can be bribed. In the end, we're back to square one.
- deepGem 9y ago
  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.
  - welcomebrand 9y ago
    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"
9y ago

deanCommie 9y ago

> 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 effectively without completely blocking all 3rd party sellers on the site.

personjerry 9y ago
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.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jraby3 9y ago
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.
jraby3 9y ago
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.
- rubinelli 9y ago
  I've seen this in other companies. It's like Amazon had a bad revenue addiction. They can't go cold-turkey and cut every suspect seller in the marketplace, because that would cause a large impact on their quarterly numbers. But if this goes untreated, it will drive out good sellers and destroy consumer confidence.
- TheBeardKing 9y ago

TekMol 9y ago

It's important to seperate Amazon the market place and Amazon the merchant here. Amazon is a market place where you can find all types of merchants. In this role, it's not so much Amazons issue what these merchants sell. It's similar to how there are all types of websites running on AWS. Amazon is not responsible for their content. Amazon is also a merchant on their own market place. I would expect Amazon and other big name merchants to usually sell you genuine products.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago

I don't really use the reviews on Amazon any more for making decisions. Typically if I'm buying something on Amazon it's a book, and I already know I want it because someone I trust recommended it, or it's some random thing I want like speakers or a bike tool or something and I just research what to buy online before I go to Amazon.

bootlooped 9y ago

This comes up every time Amazon is a topic on HN, and yet, from the article: "Amazon is rich with the most important resource in asset management: trust. The firm earned the highest reputation ranking in the U.S. in a 2017 Harris Poll. It was ranked as both the most influential and most trusted company in a 2016 survey by SurveyMonkey. It was the only company to land in the top 5 for both categories." If the above is true, then counterfeit goods are probably not ultimately a significant problem for them.

Zigurd 9y ago

Amazon sells gift cards. You can even specify one-day shipping on gift card. Amazon does a wholesale business in Amazon credits that have the effect of lowering transaction prices. For example, Coinstar machines don't charge a fee if you take an Amazon credit in return for your coins.