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(I probably worked with one of GP's predecessors on his job.) Account level signals are nice but insufficient. There's a very long tail of low activity accoun

by splonk 8y ago

(I probably worked with one of GP's predecessors on his job.) Account level signals are nice but insufficient. There's a very long tail of low activity accounts that are difficult to distinguish from a bot. You can't really classify them as bots without generating a ton of false positives, and in general you'd rather let a possibly fake review through than piss off a genuine first time reviewer.

telchar 8y ago
I imagine Google has big advantage here, at least for brick and mortar places since they can use location data to determine whether the account connected to a device has physically been in a place. It would also explain why they always ask me to review/rate businesses 5 minutes after I walk in.
- splonk 8y ago
  All the real-time location based stuff is after my time, but it definitely looks like an attempt to generate more known-good reviews. Possibly for better training data for modeling. I'm not sure that the historical location data is as useful as you might think - there's often a large temporal gap between the experience and the review writing. Google does have a big advantage in verifying good accounts through other activity, but that advantage shrinks dramatically for new accounts. There's still some things you can do, but at the end of the day you're only willing to assign so much risk to a brand new account based on metadata.
dmortin 8y ago
Allowing reviews only from active accounts could at least alleviate the problem and in case of Google it can even check the account's activity via its various services. A google account cannot really be low activity if its owner browses the web, watches youtube, etc. The tiny minority who logs out of google when browsing, etc. could not leave a review, but it may be a small price for more valid reviews.
otterley 8y ago
Isn't that what shadowbanning is for? If the initial conclusion of the evaluation is that the user is a bot, then you can make the submitting user think the post was successful; but then you can hide it from everyone else until the result changes to one that the user is real.

by splonk 8y ago

telchar 8y ago

I imagine Google has big advantage here, at least for brick and mortar places since they can use location data to determine whether the account connected to a device has physically been in a place. It would also explain why they always ask me to review/rate businesses 5 minutes after I walk in.

splonk 8y ago
All the real-time location based stuff is after my time, but it definitely looks like an attempt to generate more known-good reviews. Possibly for better training data for modeling. I'm not sure that the historical location data is as useful as you might think - there's often a large temporal gap between the experience and the review writing. Google does have a big advantage in verifying good accounts through other activity, but that advantage shrinks dramatically for new accounts. There's still some things you can do, but at the end of the day you're only willing to assign so much risk to a brand new account based on metadata.

dmortin 8y ago

Allowing reviews only from active accounts could at least alleviate the problem and in case of Google it can even check the account's activity via its various services. A google account cannot really be low activity if its owner browses the web, watches youtube, etc. The tiny minority who logs out of google when browsing, etc. could not leave a review, but it may be a small price for more valid reviews.

otterley 8y ago

Isn't that what shadowbanning is for? If the initial conclusion of the evaluation is that the user is a bot, then you can make the submitting user think the post was successful; but then you can hide it from everyone else until the result changes to one that the user is real.