8 ms·

It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general popula

It's common knowledge among most techies that the majority of Amazon reviews are fake and that counterfeit items are a big issue, but most of the general population is completely unaware. I was searching for an inexpensive pair of polarized sunglasses last week and the "Amazon Recommended" ones had an F on FakeSpot with 70%+ fake reviews.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.
- zaksoup 8y ago
  Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate. I think fake reviews are pretty widespread. This Washington Post story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchants-secretly-use-facebook-to-flood-amazon-with-fake-reviews/2018/04/23/5dad1e30-4392-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant...) talks about how Facebook groups are used trade free stuff in exchange for good reviews. I joined some, and they seemed to have a lot of traffic. FakeSpot seems to put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings.
    - corin_ 8y ago
      > FakeSpot seems to spend put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings. Presumably this (and the fact that Amazon can analyse them too) leads to a wider spread of fake reviews even on legitimate items, as having fake accounts write generic reviews on a random selection of items they don’t care about would make them harder to detect.
      - Fnoord 8y ago
        Presumably blocking spam leads to a wider spread of spam. Presumably having a zero tolerance policy on drugs leads to a wider spread of drugs. Presumably making firearms legal leads to more violence. Its an arms race, but just because of that doesn't mean the fight is worth it or not. I'd say however that the lack of accountability by Amazon (et al) is the real problem. They should be held accountable for these fake reviews. We need a lawsuit on this.
- johndubchak 8y ago
  I checked your comment and it was an F with 83% fake on FakeSpot. Edit: I was paid for writing this review.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    I checked FakeSpot with FakeSpotFakeSpot, a website to check the authenticity of fake-review spotting websites, and it received an A with 99% authenticity.
- zanmat0 8y ago
  It has worked well for me. There are plenty of A and B products, keep looking.
- loco5niner 8y ago
  It's been reliable for me. > I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it Seems like a reflection of how bad the reviews on Amazon are, not a reflection of the quality of fakespot.
- CamelCaseName 8y ago
  Some categories are simply flooded with fake reviews where you won't find a single honest listing in the first 3 pages. That said, there are plenty of A rated products in my experience. All of my products are A-rated, and unfortunately many of my competitors are honest too.
- bloaf 8y ago
  I would guess that it is legitimate. The fake review problem is real. Here is an example of an item with 2k good reviews: https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compact-job-site-table-saw-with-20-inch-max-rip-capacity-120v https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compac... Notice that it is not a cheap plastic good, and is neither easily duplicated nor ripped off.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Seems to only work with Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de. Do those not suffer from fake reviews? Also, I found that buying the full review from "trustworthy" cost 10 USD.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Its hit or miss in my opinion from when I used it. I personally just do my own homework. Rule of thumb is 2 or 3 star ratings IMO have higher weighted value because people weren't biased enough to leave a 1 or 5 star review. Always check the most critical review as well, also all the 1 star reviews. If there's a video, its the most authoritative and unbiased source usually. Images are definitely good too. Do a search on the question/answer section for competing products. The ones that are most unbiased are going to offer viewpoints in two competing products usually, but this sometimes can be faked. Check the reviewers history if there are both negative and positive reviews, as well as the semantics in their wording. Check also if there's an alternative source of reviews, e.g. best buy & newegg for electronics. Do the ratings more or less indicate the same behavior? Or is there a discrepancy by a large amount? If its a popular item or something like gym equipment, do multiple youtube searches and find both (1) authoritative well known youtubers and (2) amateur youtubers. (2) are usually unbiased (1) are potentially biased If its a really popular item (phone, laptop) use other review sites as metrics. Wirecutter/Thesweethome started off as fairly unbiased, but were acquired by a large company so the ratings are now slightly skewed. You can always check other forums like linustechtips, reddit, and do a search across that entire thread for more answers. Don't bother doing this much research unless its a big picture though. I had to buy a macbook pro so I thoroughly did 5-10 hours of research in which version I wanted (2015), which specs, potential issues I would run across, considering where the 3rd party sources of used macbook pros would most likely be sold at (ebay), etc. Differences in CPU/GPU benchmarks, battery life cycle usages, etc.
wuliwong 8y ago
On what do you base your opinion that the "general population is completely unaware?"
- dudus 8y ago
  I believe that's just common sense.
IAmGraydon 8y ago
You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a product that is close in quality to the real thing. If they can just trick people into thinking it IS the real thing, they can make as much margin as the big guys without the cost of building an actual brand. BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is.
- cstejerean 8y ago
  Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product. Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two other examples from this past weekend).
  - jlavine 8y ago
    I find that it's usually pretty clear from the bizarre language, excess enthusiasm, and lack of detail which reviews are fake or paid for, without need to refer to any 3rd-party websites. For many products with fewer than 100 ratings, it's clear that all or almost all of the ratings are fake. This often happens when there are several versions of essentially the same product, presumably all from the same factory in China. It's usually best to stick to the one or two variants with the most reviews.
    - retsibsi 8y ago
      Bear in mind that the existence of obviously fake reviews doesn't imply that all fake reviews are obvious. Maybe it would be prohibitively expensive to do a really good job of producing fake reviews at scale, I don't know -- but surely some companies manage to avoid the obvious tells.
marviel 8y ago
You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.
- 394549 8y ago
  > You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud. They must not be interested. After all, they still get paid and have a level of legal insulation due to how they've structure Amazon marketplace. I wonder how long it'll take for their overall brand to take a hit over this, though.
  - swozey 8y ago
    There's probably a huge number of shoppers that use Amazon for nearly everything, myself included, that would just toss the cheap crappy thing they got off Amazon and try another brand from, you guessed it, Amazon. I don't know how many horrible sets of bath rugs and towels I went through on Amazon before I finally bit the bullet and bought an actual expensive brand and the difference is staggering. Before someone asks they're from Frontgate (not on Amazon). Point being I'm just sending Amazon money over and over again.. It's definitely made me go back to stores where I can see the product for certain things.
- technofiend 8y ago
  Similarly for Kindle Unlimited despite the fact that Amazon clearly has the technology to address Markov Chain generated fakes, plagiarism and upvoting and review cabals, Amazon either chooses not to invest or not to invest enough to prevent all of that bad behavior. IMHO investing 1/2 of 1% of the KU pool is enough to fund human review via their Mechanical Turk program. It wouldn't be perfect but it would eliminate most of the fraud.
- notacoward 8y ago
  They have the resources. What they lack is the proper incentive. As long as fake reviews don't completely destroy the customer experience to the point that people forego any other advantages (mostly convenience) of shopping there, Amazon will continue to reap the short-term benefit of more apparent variety, more apparent quality, and more sales. Any effort beyond keeping the fakery just short of destroying the brand isn't worth it to them.
dominotw 8y ago
I get fake brushheads this week for my Phillips toothpaste. Also Amazon recommend.
electriclove 8y ago
So true.. I like the Flying Fisherman San Jose sunglasses and have gotten them from Amazon under <$15 in the past. Not quite as cheap and as disposable at $30 IMO. https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Fisherman-Polarized-Sunglasses-Gunmetal/dp/B003ZZI42I/ https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Fisherman-Polarized-Sunglasses...
aiyodev 8y ago
Why is this “common knowledge” while almost nobody believes astroturfing exists on Reddit or Hacker News? Serious question. I don’t see a fundamental difference.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

prolikewh0a 8y ago

How legitimate is FakeSpot though? I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it.

zaksoup 8y ago
Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate.
- 394549 8y ago
  > Is that a sign of illegitimate fake-spotting, or a sign of just how widespread fake reviews are? Personally I'm quite inclined to believe an extremely high fail rate. I think fake reviews are pretty widespread. This Washington Post story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchants-secretly-use-facebook-to-flood-amazon-with-fake-reviews/2018/04/23/5dad1e30-4392-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-merchant...) talks about how Facebook groups are used trade free stuff in exchange for good reviews. I joined some, and they seemed to have a lot of traffic. FakeSpot seems to put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings.
  - corin_ 8y ago
    > FakeSpot seems to spend put a lot of emphasis on analyzing the reviewers, probably looking for accounts who appear to be participating in one of these review rings. Presumably this (and the fact that Amazon can analyse them too) leads to a wider spread of fake reviews even on legitimate items, as having fake accounts write generic reviews on a random selection of items they don’t care about would make them harder to detect.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      Presumably blocking spam leads to a wider spread of spam. Presumably having a zero tolerance policy on drugs leads to a wider spread of drugs. Presumably making firearms legal leads to more violence. Its an arms race, but just because of that doesn't mean the fight is worth it or not. I'd say however that the lack of accountability by Amazon (et al) is the real problem. They should be held accountable for these fake reviews. We need a lawsuit on this.
johndubchak 8y ago
I checked your comment and it was an F with 83% fake on FakeSpot. Edit: I was paid for writing this review.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  I checked FakeSpot with FakeSpotFakeSpot, a website to check the authenticity of fake-review spotting websites, and it received an A with 99% authenticity.
zanmat0 8y ago
It has worked well for me. There are plenty of A and B products, keep looking.
loco5niner 8y ago
It's been reliable for me. > I find nearly everything has an F with a high amount of fake reviews when I use it Seems like a reflection of how bad the reviews on Amazon are, not a reflection of the quality of fakespot.
CamelCaseName 8y ago
Some categories are simply flooded with fake reviews where you won't find a single honest listing in the first 3 pages. That said, there are plenty of A rated products in my experience. All of my products are A-rated, and unfortunately many of my competitors are honest too.
bloaf 8y ago
I would guess that it is legitimate. The fake review problem is real. Here is an example of an item with 2k good reviews: https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compact-job-site-table-saw-with-20-inch-max-rip-capacity-120v https://www.fakespot.com/product/dewalt-dw745-10-inch-compac... Notice that it is not a cheap plastic good, and is neither easily duplicated nor ripped off.
Fnoord 8y ago
Seems to only work with Amazon.com not Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de. Do those not suffer from fake reviews? Also, I found that buying the full review from "trustworthy" cost 10 USD.
Kagerjay 8y ago
Its hit or miss in my opinion from when I used it. I personally just do my own homework. Rule of thumb is 2 or 3 star ratings IMO have higher weighted value because people weren't biased enough to leave a 1 or 5 star review. Always check the most critical review as well, also all the 1 star reviews. If there's a video, its the most authoritative and unbiased source usually. Images are definitely good too. Do a search on the question/answer section for competing products. The ones that are most unbiased are going to offer viewpoints in two competing products usually, but this sometimes can be faked. Check the reviewers history if there are both negative and positive reviews, as well as the semantics in their wording. Check also if there's an alternative source of reviews, e.g. best buy & newegg for electronics. Do the ratings more or less indicate the same behavior? Or is there a discrepancy by a large amount? If its a popular item or something like gym equipment, do multiple youtube searches and find both (1) authoritative well known youtubers and (2) amateur youtubers. (2) are usually unbiased (1) are potentially biased If its a really popular item (phone, laptop) use other review sites as metrics. Wirecutter/Thesweethome started off as fairly unbiased, but were acquired by a large company so the ratings are now slightly skewed. You can always check other forums like linustechtips, reddit, and do a search across that entire thread for more answers. Don't bother doing this much research unless its a big picture though. I had to buy a macbook pro so I thoroughly did 5-10 hours of research in which version I wanted (2015), which specs, potential issues I would run across, considering where the 3rd party sources of used macbook pros would most likely be sold at (ebay), etc. Differences in CPU/GPU benchmarks, battery life cycle usages, etc.

wuliwong 8y ago

On what do you base your opinion that the "general population is completely unaware?"

dudus 8y ago
I believe that's just common sense.

IAmGraydon 8y ago

You really should never be shopping on Amazon for high margin products that are easy to fake. This means perfume, cosmetics, sunglasses and name brand clothing. These items are cheap to manufacture (even the real ones), but get their high perceived value from brand. Those Raybans you love? A $250 pair costs Luxotica around $5 to manufacture. So items like these are common to fake because the fakers can often get a product that is close in quality to the real thing. If they can just trick people into thinking it IS the real thing, they can make as much margin as the big guys without the cost of building an actual brand. BTW, because of the way Amazon’s FBA service works, even ordering items that are “sold by” a reputable retailer but “fulfilled by Amazon” gets you a high chance of receiving a fake. This is because they mix FBA stock and don’t discriminate what stock it comes from when filling that item, regardless of who the seller is.

cstejerean 8y ago
Fakes I’m not too worried about, I can usually spot those. The problem is that many categories are flooded with garbage products with inflated reviews. Try to find a bathroom scale. Tons of choices with 4.5 stars and above, but most of the reviews are fake, so it would take hours to sort through the choices and find a decent product. Same for most things I’ve wanted to buy recently (hiking poles and a daypack are two other examples from this past weekend).
- jlavine 8y ago
  I find that it's usually pretty clear from the bizarre language, excess enthusiasm, and lack of detail which reviews are fake or paid for, without need to refer to any 3rd-party websites. For many products with fewer than 100 ratings, it's clear that all or almost all of the ratings are fake. This often happens when there are several versions of essentially the same product, presumably all from the same factory in China. It's usually best to stick to the one or two variants with the most reviews.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    Bear in mind that the existence of obviously fake reviews doesn't imply that all fake reviews are obvious. Maybe it would be prohibitively expensive to do a really good job of producing fake reviews at scale, I don't know -- but surely some companies manage to avoid the obvious tells.

marviel 8y ago

You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud.

394549 8y ago
> You'd think that Amazon would have the machine learning resources to detect likely-fraudulent items with high accuracy, should they be interested in preventing such obvious fraud. They must not be interested. After all, they still get paid and have a level of legal insulation due to how they've structure Amazon marketplace. I wonder how long it'll take for their overall brand to take a hit over this, though.
- swozey 8y ago
  There's probably a huge number of shoppers that use Amazon for nearly everything, myself included, that would just toss the cheap crappy thing they got off Amazon and try another brand from, you guessed it, Amazon. I don't know how many horrible sets of bath rugs and towels I went through on Amazon before I finally bit the bullet and bought an actual expensive brand and the difference is staggering. Before someone asks they're from Frontgate (not on Amazon). Point being I'm just sending Amazon money over and over again.. It's definitely made me go back to stores where I can see the product for certain things.
technofiend 8y ago
Similarly for Kindle Unlimited despite the fact that Amazon clearly has the technology to address Markov Chain generated fakes, plagiarism and upvoting and review cabals, Amazon either chooses not to invest or not to invest enough to prevent all of that bad behavior. IMHO investing 1/2 of 1% of the KU pool is enough to fund human review via their Mechanical Turk program. It wouldn't be perfect but it would eliminate most of the fraud.
notacoward 8y ago
They have the resources. What they lack is the proper incentive. As long as fake reviews don't completely destroy the customer experience to the point that people forego any other advantages (mostly convenience) of shopping there, Amazon will continue to reap the short-term benefit of more apparent variety, more apparent quality, and more sales. Any effort beyond keeping the fakery just short of destroying the brand isn't worth it to them.

dominotw 8y ago

I get fake brushheads this week for my Phillips toothpaste. Also Amazon recommend.

electriclove 8y ago

So true.. I like the Flying Fisherman San Jose sunglasses and have gotten them from Amazon under <$15 in the past. Not quite as cheap and as disposable at $30 IMO. https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Fisherman-Polarized-Sunglasses-Gunmetal/dp/B003ZZI42I/ https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Fisherman-Polarized-Sunglasses...

aiyodev 8y ago

Why is this “common knowledge” while almost nobody believes astroturfing exists on Reddit or Hacker News? Serious question. I don’t see a fundamental difference.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]