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Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-star Amazon reviews

598 points by sefrost 8y ago

Pica_soO 8y ago
Maybe its a good thing, that in that social ad driven dystopia, the machines will do what we humans could not accomplish, break the cycle, by clogging the algos with synthetic people and opinions. Freedom by Noise.
huy-nguyen 8y ago
I now check fakespot before every Amazon purchase.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  There's no great reason to believe that fakespot is actually good at telling you when reviews are fake. Compare the absolute maximum that fakespot can ever do against the description given in the article, and you'll see that fakespot is no panacea. Fakespot can only ever catch a certain kind of low-effort fake review that is becoming less relevant as markets find new ways to cheat people.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    "markets find new ways to cheat people" This is a fascinating construction. To me, it makes perfect sense (and reality seems to be heavily underscoring this perspective) but I feel it challenges some profound assumptions very commonly held by Western culture, about how the world works. If markets replace normal transactions with the optimal ways to cheat people, as a natural consequence of what markets are, how can we disrupt that phenomenon and replace markets with something else that selects for other values?
    - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
      > how can we disrupt that phenomenon Traditionally the answer to "How can we stop people from getting cheated?" is to introduce consumer protection regulations and actively punish the cheaters.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  Amazon should come up with a proprietary and secret algorithm (the way Google search is) to do the same thing. They are in the best position to do this, since they have all the info. They could leverage purchase history, payment methods, addresses, account age, etc...; they even have the resources to use slightly more invasive information such as credit score. It's knowable what products are having fake reviews bought for them, they could secretly flag accounts suspected of this and lower their weight. Fakespot can't get half of the information Amazon already has. Amazon needs to fix this for themselves.
plink 8y ago
I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. Also, I've extremely curtailed any purchasing on Amazon as I've come to perceive the majority of their marketplace to be a degenerative crap house.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  I met a family member (like 2nd cousin or further away) at some wedding a few years ago. I only talked to him once, but he was very clear about this situation. He owned a hotel, and was trying to track down the writers of bad reviews on Yelp. Primarily, as the owner of the hotel, it was his job to find out what's wrong about the hotel and improve it. But he started to investigate some of the 1-star reviews, and came to the conclusion that these people didn't exist. He dug through all the receipts, he tried to track down and correlate the time with when these reviews popped up and tried to track down any issue. His ultimate conclusion was that a number of the 1-star reviews on his hotel were simply fake. The discussion continued to talk about tort law, and how he's unable to even get a person to sue. He can't sue Yelp, because Yelp wasn't the author of those posts. So he was basically helpless to defend against 1-star reviews. In any case, if people can fake a 5-star review, they can also fake a 1-star review. And based on what I discussed with this man years ago, it seems like it really is happening right now. Its probably easier for a Hotel-chain to leave bad reviews on their competitors. There are only so many hotels in a given area, and Yelp easily allows you to list all of the competitors in your region. Its probably less of a thing on Amazon, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't exist there either.
  - guelo 8y ago
    It's definitely a thing on Amazon also.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    So you can leave a review without even using the service or product on Yelp? Without a verified purchase, why would anyway take the review seriously?
bingbingo 8y ago
Shit like this is what made me lose confidence in Amazon and I stopped my prime subscription. My wife bought me “luxury” branded jackets and clothing for fall. Half of them were counterfeit. I called Amazon and they said I can return them and they’ll send me new ones. Ok. How will I know those won’t be counterfeit? Worse, I found a jacket was counterfeit after the return period when it literally started to fall apart at the seams. Welp, Amazon said they can’t refund me. Multiple times my packages are either not delivered on time or aren’t delivered at all. 2 times they were half way across the state. When I called them to ask, they wanted me to confirm my address since they magically and suddenly couldn’t find my address anymore. Well guys you’ve delivered 10k+ worth of goods to me at this address this year alone. WTF?! My customer service experience also degraded every other instance. When they missed my last delivery date I called them and threatened to cancel and the rep said “Sure, Sir, let me do that after I reorder this item”. He figured it was quicker or reorder an item than wait for it to get back from across the state.
- zarriak 8y ago
  Amazon doesn't deliver the things you bought. I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. There is a reason designer stores exist. There are many reasons that Amazon as a company and service are bad but almost none of what you describe is a valid complaint.
  - golf1052 8y ago
    Amazon does do deliveries. This is also a valid complaint. Amazon doesn't say don't order X, Y, or Z; they let you order anything. They just need to work harder on solving these issues because I've seen many other complaints like this.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    Amazon logistics deliver at least 1/3 of the items I purchase from them. A "Prime" branded van literally pulls up to my house and someone who I assume works for Amazon drops the package on my stoop. > I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. I read this sentence four times and still don't quite understand it. Particularly in response to someone who said they tried to return an item to Amazon exactly because they realized it was counterfeit. Can you rephrase whatever it was you were trying to say there?
ryandrake 8y ago
Honestly, I'm shocked that in 2018, anyone believes anything they read in online reviews written by strangers on the Internet. It's got to be common knowledge by now that most of them are fake and often paid for, and that some companies manipulate which results you see based on not-quite-above-the-board criteria. Who actually takes these things seriously anymore?
- BadassFractal 8y ago
  I'm more interested why this isn't something that Amazon didn't decide to police. They know when someone purchases something from their store, they can limit reviews to those people who have many confirmed purchases from them and perhaps have some kind of human validation to them (showing ID?). Just spitballing here, but it seems like a solvable issue.
denzil_correa 8y ago
Another example of Campbell's Law playing out [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law
cs702 8y ago
Wow. The Facebook groups mentioned in the article have 87,000 members, who are offered full reimbursement of product costs in exchange for writing five-star reviews on Amazon. The only way to describe this is as a large-scale effort to deceive and defraud mass consumers. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
- astrodust 8y ago
  The only way to describe this is as an unfortunate inevitability of review systems as a whole.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - toss1 8y ago
    I'd say of unmoderated (or poorly moderated) review systems. E.g., we don't see this on Angie's List or Houzz. I've found that the only way to get useful information out of most Amazon reviews is to look at the 1- & 2-stars, trying to filter out the fake competitor hits, and see if there are any consistent issues that aren't DEU issues. Then look at the 3- & 4-stars and see what seems to be good. That said, I expect it'll only be a matter of time until this strategy is no good.
    - giancarlostoro 8y ago
      Another factor is reviews with pictures depending on what you are buying. In any case I cancelled Amazon prime. They wont be getting my money once my membership expires. I rather pay for a service thats worthwhile to me. I rather get my things at Walmart or BestBuy due to convenience and now BestBuy will price match Amazon.
      - mcpherrinm 8y ago
        For all the problems that Amazon has, there is a long history of Best Buy actively pushing consumer-harmful practises that I would still rate them a lower choice. The first one that comes to mind is forcing printer manufacturers to not bundle USB cables so they can separately sell them at a high markup
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
Couldn't you post a five star review, get reimbursed, and then change your review to an honest one? Asking for a friend.
- DominikPeters 8y ago
  The offers on those Facebook groups all seem to ask for amazon profile name before agreeing on the deal, to check your reviewing history. I doubt your proposed scheme would be long-lived.
  - i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
    So you have to be an honest fake reviewer. The irony.
acjohnson55 8y ago
The fantastic podcast Reply All did an episode on this a few months ago: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124 https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124
- maximp 8y ago
  I just heard this yesterday! Can second, great episode.
  - iliis 8y ago
    So... Five stars then? ;) (But seriously, HN comments are actually great at recommending things.)
    - technofiend 8y ago
      Definitely HN is the latest in a long string of sites that were good until the general public discovered them, Reddit being the most recent example. You're right: love the suggestions here and I hope the signal : noise ratio remains favorable for a good long while.
qwerty2020 8y ago
Great planet money podcast on this [1] with owner of site [2] that tries to surface fake reviews. [1] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... [2] https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/
electriclove 8y ago
Fakespot.com
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  Reposting a comment I left elsewhere: There's no great reason to believe that fakespot is actually good at telling you when reviews are fake. Compare the absolute maximum that fakespot can ever do against the description given in the article, and you'll see that fakespot is no panacea. Fakespot can only ever catch a certain kind of low-effort fake review that is becoming less relevant as markets find new ways to cheat people.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
DanielleMolloy 8y ago
I check Fakespot, and click on some reviewer profiles. The idiots doing full-time positive product reviewing are so easy to spot by their hilarious review history that you start to assume that Amazon doesn’t do anything against them on purpose. They also mainly flock on the crap within a single month or so (but this is one of many Fakespot metrics). I tried buying a new bicycle light last week and literally every product was crap with fake reviewing. After wasting an hour on this I ended up not buying from Amazon. Rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese crap and counterfeit industry on their platform is likely to become Amazon’s death if they don’t admit their mistake and turn the wheel now.
- gesman 8y ago
  Well said. Amazon is either going to clean their house or someone is going to do it for them.
- delfinom 8y ago
  Amazon rolled out the carpet for counterfeit when they mixed their inventory with seller inventory. Do not buy common automotive parts from Amazon. Really good chance you will get a knockoff part.
  - DanielleMolloy 8y ago
    They have to clearly separate between Marketplace and Amazon again. Everything used to be fine when people knew from whom they bought at any time. They are removing the line in multiple ways right now (one of the worst being comingling).
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  Completely agree. I think a better way to get reviews now is just to type "(product name) review" into youtube. Seems more honest review. Stay away from anything that is Chinese product. Most of it is so sloppily made.
  - mikehollinger 8y ago
kaffee 8y ago
Let's not forget that these fake reviews are being paid for. That's clearly better than non-paid-for fake reviews. That is, there's some friction for the malicious actors. Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. This is all to say that it looks like Amazon and others (e.g., Steam) are doing the right thing in requiring a verified purchase in order to leave a review. But it does seem like there's an easy improvement that Amazon could make: offer amnesty to people who report (after the fact) that they left a fake review. The review would be marked internally as fake (and this would impact rankings, etc.) but the vendor would be none the wiser.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. Incidentally, this was the motivation behind a PoW system called Hashcash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash.
  - user111233 8y ago
    Bitmessage had this and it would burn up my laptop cpu trying to send a text message but spammers with gpu farms could still take out the whole network with no troubles.
    - cma 8y ago
      Seems like in a mature implementation your phone/laptop would route the message to a GPU farm and the work requirement could be scaled appropriately. And for whitelisted everyday contacts the computation cost could be zero.
- jessriedel 8y ago
  > Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. Except the spam email problem was solved without opening the door to another place where uninformed consumers could get nickle-and-dimed? Aren't we all glad the pay-for-email push failed?
abruzzi 8y ago
A bit off topic, but companies/organizations that use punctuation in their name make sentences look screwy. The organization in this article is “Which?” which the Guardian faithfully reproduces (without the quote I used). As a result, every time the name of the organization comes at the end of a sentence, the Guardian doesn’t end it with a period, they end it with a question mark. This made me go back and reread at least one sentence because I thought I misread it. I read the sentence as a statement, not a question (and it was a statement.)
- howenterprisey 8y ago
  Completely agreed. I think Wikipedia has the right idea for dealing with company names like this - use title case and omit anything that isn't pronounced. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks#General_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trad...
  - joegahona 8y ago
    AP, CMS, and any other grown-up style guide would eschew goofy punctuation in company/brand/band names.
- markdown 8y ago
  Joomla!
z3t4 8y ago
Markets where you can not tell how good a product is simply by reading the technical spec or scientific tests, eg markets where fake reviews will have a strong impact is not a market you want to enter, because everyone is hustling and the price people are willing to pay will keep dropping.
a-dub 8y ago
This sort of thing seems pervasive these days. I see it on Yelp, Google Reviews and Amazon. (hell, the NYT has had pieces on people buying their competitors products en-masse just to give them 1-star reviews and move the relative needle in terms of Amazon reviews). It will have to be fixed though, it seems that buying things sight unseen only really works when you have a lot of evidence (reviews) that the product is good. Seems like a good way for an upstart to differentiate themselves.
perpetualcrayon 8y ago
*-star reviews on all of the major review sites are 2-dimensional. They should be 3 dimensional (0-x stars) + time. This way if clusters of 5-star reviews show up in an extremely short period of time it's a red flag. Instead of seeing a static "this product/service got x stars", we should be able to see "this product/service, within the last 1 month, received on average x stars". And then you can extrapolate, oh they received on average 2 stars before they upgraded their product, and now the product is getting 4 stars. Or something like: "this restaurant was getting on average 1.5 stars last year, but recently they're getting glowing reviews. Maybe they fired the manager?".
- bootlooped 8y ago
  Fake review services have already figured out how to slow-drip reviews. If you put a mediocre product on Amazon and buy reviews, there will be no legit review history to compare against either. It's a tough nut to crack if the fake reviews are linked to real purchases already.
  - perpetualcrayon 8y ago
    I'd say by slow dripping the reviews won't they have to contend more with the "real" reviews? After all by pushing a bunch of 5 stars quickly the average will be bumped up substantially and be unaffected by real reviews. At least in this case they'll have to contend with legit reviews and will not be as easy to sprout all the way to the top of the search results for same reason.
    - jobigoud 8y ago
      It's the same no? If there are 10 times more fake reviews than legit ones and they can spread them over time, you can't use the distribution to detect it.
      - perpetualcrayon 8y ago
        I think there are probably a number of reasons it's different. 1) 1000 5-star reviews with maybe a handful of 3,2,1 star reviews trickling in as actual consumers realize their mistake is less of a signal not to buy than if I see another low review trickled in amongst the 10-20 5-star reviews. 2) The company defrauding by purchasing the reviews is not going to make their money back as quickly probably since they won't end up on top of search results as often. So these companies will be stretched a lot thinner and probably recoup their expenses a lot slower than if they start instantly showing up on top of peoples' search results. And in order to keep from "floating" a bunch of free stuff without reviews they'll have to be extremely coordinated about how they distribute their products and request recipients to provide the reviews in order to make it a worth while pursuit.
x0054 8y ago
Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I purchased several sets and returned them). The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. To get the nice American made ones I have to got 10-20 pages deep or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China. Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure they can make quality arrows in China, but what makes it to the top of Amazon is utter crap. I noticed this with many other products as well, but the arrows is a particularly noticeable example because it's something I regularly replace as they get beat up and destroyed (I shoot a lot).
- joelx 8y ago
  I suggest Amazon solves this by requiring ALL purchasers to leave reviews of ALL products they buy. Or by adding a $10 fee to every purchase that can only be refunded by leaving a review.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    That will just create a shitload of low-effort noise in between useful reviews.
  - phakding 8y ago
    I don't think I would agree to that model. I wouldn't like my money being held hostage for a review. If they give me a dollar discount, on the other hand, I would be much inclined to leave a review.
    - eightysixfour 8y ago
      It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.
mancerayder 8y ago
A colleague recently pointed me to fakespot.com, where you paste the URL of a product (like an Amazon product) and (it seems) it does an ML type analysis to score the likelihood of fakeness in the aggregate of reviews with a score and then highlights the likely fake ones and why it thinks what it thinks. There's surely a market for verification for customers as much as there's one for the criminally-minded sellers.
- shostack 8y ago
  Which begs the question of why Amazon isn't offering this themselves, or doing it in the background in a way that prevents this from being the problem it is. I have to wonder at some level if in the short term this boosts their sales figures, but long term erodes trust in buying from them and diminishes their stranglehold. I used to trust Amazon reviews to the point I'd often not read a ton or research reviews else where before purchasing. These days I often opt to just buy from a retailer from a name brand. With Amazon increasing prices it often isn't much difference in price and there's better quality control. It has officially become a chore to buy something on Amazon if you care about doing any due diligence.
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    I would guess that the reason that Fakespot works is that not too many people use it (relative to the total number of Amazon users) so people writing fake reviews don't specifically try to beat it. Anything Amazon is doing, the people writing fake reviews will specifically try to counter, so Amazon has a much harder job cut out for them.
failrate 8y ago
Ive been having a direct experience with follower bots on soundcloud. I'll post some weird music, and bots will immediately like or follow. I do not follow them back, so they unlike and unfollow.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Yeah it looks like there is a "reputation economy", even for platforms where money is only indirect. Instagram auto follow/unfollow, Twitter followers, Youtube likes and subscribers, etc. You can buy likes/karma/points, followers/subscribers, and also whole accounts. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a burgeoning market for GitHub followers and stars so you can look good during background checks. Or that you could buy LinkedIn "acquaintances" and "skills" and even Facebook "friends". I'm worried about what's next. Rotten Tomatoes? GoodReads?
tinkerteller 8y ago
Even bigger issue on FB is fake ads. About 2 out of 3 ads I see are usually of some very bad product but with very attractive video and headline. I've seen people in my family buying often and getting regrets. Now I have developed muscle memory to absolutely not trust any product/sign ups on FB.
BadassFractal 8y ago
What are some solid sources of product reviews these days, where the reviewers are both competent and unbiased? I will occasionally go to sweethome or wirecutter, but I'm never sure if I'm just reading a well hidden PR piece from a sponsor or if this is their actual opinion.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jliptzin 8y ago
Amazon is worth an enormous amount of money. They can afford to solve this problem. Here's one idea: invite regular amazon users with accounts active for at least > 1 year, who have some kind of verified identity/address, and ask them to become certified reviewers. Give them amazon credits/coupons in exchange for reviews of all the items they've purchased in the last 6-12 months (if they haven't yet left a review for those items). Don't pick people who have only been purchasing a few items from the same vendor. Find people who have a purchase history in line with the average user, not a company insider trying to game the system. This way you don't have this perverse practice of incentivizing people to leave positive reviews on items they want for free. If a reviewer is found to be fake/scamming the system, just remove all their reviews and block them from future reviews. It's time to stop allowing the raw internet to leave reviews. The scammers have won. Time to move on to a more sophisticated filtering system. This feels like email before gmail came along and largely solved spam. It'll get better again.
- beckler 8y ago
  It's probably more profitable to leave it the way it is... Which opens up the door for a competitor. Imagine if there was a different site that became known for its highly reliable ratings. It would eat Amazon's lunch and dinner.
  - hef19898 8y ago
    The more I think about it the more potential weaknesses I see at Amazon that can be exploited by a competitor. At least in the traditional retail business, I cannot judge AWS.
- cherioo 8y ago
  You mean like Amazon Vine program?
whatever1 8y ago
I was looking in Amazon for a protective case for the iPhone XR that my SO has preordered. Apparently there are many cases and even more reviews of very happy customers (verified purchasers as per Amazon) who were making very positive comments on the perfect fit of the case (on a phone that is not yet on sale).
- jobigoud 8y ago
  Probably the inventory variant scam. They added the new case as a variant of older ones and got the reviews carried over.
codespeedy 8y ago
This is unrelated comment I know. But i did not found any suuport or FAQ on this site. Can anyone tell me why it's saying that I am still a new user so that I can't post anything on this site? how much time it will take to aactive my account?
AJRF 8y ago
I assume modern journalism is just the pursuit of the ability to conflate as many big tech names into one headline as possible. Jackpot for the Guardian here!
fetbaffe 8y ago
As a result I never trust five star reviews. I only trusts reviews that has some critism. IMDB is also a site that has gone downhill, filled with fake reviews.
pergadad 8y ago
"use the reporting tools" - as far as I'm aware there is no reporting tool for "this product is fake" and "this review looks fake". If they did want to fight fake reviews they would make reporting easy. They'd also not allow completely different products to be listed on the same page. ...
WindowsFon4life 8y ago
If this is such an obvious issue in E mercantile capitalism, then it seems an obvious choice for other places that money and power come into play.
thx11389793 8y ago
Protip: if you find a crap product that's being shilled for in the reviews, you can talk your way into getting paid decently for your silence. I know someone who was paid several hundred dollars to not leave a bad review for a something that cost under $50. One scathing review that exposes their scheme might lost them tens, maybe a hundred multiples of their unit profit margin.
- mprev 8y ago
  Or you could behave ethically and not allow yourself to be bought.
Tempest1981 8y ago
I use fakespot.com, and it’s surprising how often the ratings are deceptive. Just paste in any Amazon product URL. For iOS, this shortcut makes it easier: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9id390/check_amazon_review_quality_with_fakespot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9id390/check_ama...
jobigoud 8y ago
Also this very interesting Planet Money episode #838 about people all over the world receiving weird packages full of random Chinese items that they never ordered. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/episode-838-a-series-of-mysterious-packages https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/epis... Turns out they are phantom packages from vendors on Ali Baba and TaoBao gaming the review system. This is called "brushing". They managed to interview a "brusher". So the brushers have to make themselves look completely real during the buying process, hesitating, clicking links from different vendors and only after a while select the actual item they target. To get the "verified purchase" tag something has to be mailed somewhere. But instead of the actual item the vendor sends a package with random stuff and sometimes they send these to addresses of previous unknowing international customers to make it look more real.
yAnonymous 8y ago
Amazon is now in the business of selling a lot of cheap crap instead of promoting quality articles. Everyone I ever talked to about this noticed it and most are looking for other ways to buy their stuff. They are also actively engaging in fraud by having up fake reviews for low quality prime articles and then closing the reviews for said articles so legit buyers can't review them. When you report it, you get the usual "we are looking into it", but nothing ever happens. You'd expect this kind of shady behavior from a company that is in financial trouble and I wonder how they'll deal with their tainted image going forward.
entropy_ 8y ago
I don't live in the US/UK/Europe so Amazon deliveries are things I pay a lot for and take a while to get to me. So when I buy something, I have to be damn sure I'm going to like it. That's lead to the following strategy: filter reviews to only look at 1-star and 2-star reviews and make sure you can live with it if all the things people say there end up being true. It's served me well so far and no amount of 5* reviews will change my decision to buy or not. Also, I look for things elsewhere, and only go to Amazon for buying, I don't use their search. That helps a lot as well
wilsonfiifi 8y ago
One way to solve this problem would be to create a curated directory of reputable sellers on amazon and just link to their products. Sprinkle some Algolia magic dust for search and voilà. Easier said than done but it’s a start. Actually it seems one site/app is doing that [0] haven’t tried it personally but they seem to have the right idea IMHO. Edit: I should have linked directly to their about page [1] [0] https://canopy.co [1] https://canopy.co/about
Gerardd 8y ago
Nowadays, going on Amazon for product hunt is equivalent to searching for a malware-free good quality torrent.
homero 8y ago
I despise Amazon now. Every search returns ads for Chinese fakes and other overpriced fba products. I absolutely love Costco and dream about having Costco prices and impeccable quality with Prime.
dmritard96 8y ago
On this post, many commentators seem convinced amazon will have issues resulting from lack of trust. Any leading indicators that would bring some credibility to this claim that anyone can share? In general, the HN community seems to be a bit more opinionated (and informed) than the average nonHN reader wrt privacy and other things that get attention in the tech circles. Always looking to understand the difference between HN community and the broader populace.
graphenus 8y ago
There's another side of the medal. Merchants that are trying to sell anything on Amazon have to have some positive reviews, otherwise their product will not be sold at all, even when the product is great. I guess that here two factors contribute, the product is being outranked by others, which have good reviews, and users not trusting such products. I totally see how in this chicken and egg problem merchants would choose to buy some fake reviews. Now, add the problem of lack of transparency in reviews, i.e. there's no record of rejected legitimate reviews, no record of removed reviews; and now you have a dysfunctional system. No one is happy about it, but it degrades both quality of Amazon and trust in it.

598 points by sefrost 8y ago

Maybe its a good thing, that in that social ad driven dystopia, the machines will do what we humans could not accomplish, break the cycle, by clogging the algos with synthetic people and opinions. Freedom by Noise.

huy-nguyen 8y ago

I now check fakespot before every Amazon purchase.

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
There's no great reason to believe that fakespot is actually good at telling you when reviews are fake. Compare the absolute maximum that fakespot can ever do against the description given in the article, and you'll see that fakespot is no panacea. Fakespot can only ever catch a certain kind of low-effort fake review that is becoming less relevant as markets find new ways to cheat people.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  "markets find new ways to cheat people" This is a fascinating construction. To me, it makes perfect sense (and reality seems to be heavily underscoring this perspective) but I feel it challenges some profound assumptions very commonly held by Western culture, about how the world works. If markets replace normal transactions with the optimal ways to cheat people, as a natural consequence of what markets are, how can we disrupt that phenomenon and replace markets with something else that selects for other values?
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    > how can we disrupt that phenomenon Traditionally the answer to "How can we stop people from getting cheated?" is to introduce consumer protection regulations and actively punish the cheaters.
bootlooped 8y ago
Amazon should come up with a proprietary and secret algorithm (the way Google search is) to do the same thing. They are in the best position to do this, since they have all the info. They could leverage purchase history, payment methods, addresses, account age, etc...; they even have the resources to use slightly more invasive information such as credit score. It's knowable what products are having fake reviews bought for them, they could secretly flag accounts suspected of this and lower their weight. Fakespot can't get half of the information Amazon already has. Amazon needs to fix this for themselves.

plink 8y ago

I feel unaffected by such fake reviews as the only ones I ascribe much value to are the negative ones. Also, I've extremely curtailed any purchasing on Amazon as I've come to perceive the majority of their marketplace to be a degenerative crap house.

dragontamer 8y ago
I met a family member (like 2nd cousin or further away) at some wedding a few years ago. I only talked to him once, but he was very clear about this situation. He owned a hotel, and was trying to track down the writers of bad reviews on Yelp. Primarily, as the owner of the hotel, it was his job to find out what's wrong about the hotel and improve it. But he started to investigate some of the 1-star reviews, and came to the conclusion that these people didn't exist. He dug through all the receipts, he tried to track down and correlate the time with when these reviews popped up and tried to track down any issue. His ultimate conclusion was that a number of the 1-star reviews on his hotel were simply fake. The discussion continued to talk about tort law, and how he's unable to even get a person to sue. He can't sue Yelp, because Yelp wasn't the author of those posts. So he was basically helpless to defend against 1-star reviews. In any case, if people can fake a 5-star review, they can also fake a 1-star review. And based on what I discussed with this man years ago, it seems like it really is happening right now. Its probably easier for a Hotel-chain to leave bad reviews on their competitors. There are only so many hotels in a given area, and Yelp easily allows you to list all of the competitors in your region. Its probably less of a thing on Amazon, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't exist there either.
- guelo 8y ago
  It's definitely a thing on Amazon also.
- gitgud 8y ago
  So you can leave a review without even using the service or product on Yelp? Without a verified purchase, why would anyway take the review seriously?

bingbingo 8y ago

Shit like this is what made me lose confidence in Amazon and I stopped my prime subscription. My wife bought me “luxury” branded jackets and clothing for fall. Half of them were counterfeit. I called Amazon and they said I can return them and they’ll send me new ones. Ok. How will I know those won’t be counterfeit? Worse, I found a jacket was counterfeit after the return period when it literally started to fall apart at the seams. Welp, Amazon said they can’t refund me. Multiple times my packages are either not delivered on time or aren’t delivered at all. 2 times they were half way across the state. When I called them to ask, they wanted me to confirm my address since they magically and suddenly couldn’t find my address anymore. Well guys you’ve delivered 10k+ worth of goods to me at this address this year alone. WTF?! My customer service experience also degraded every other instance. When they missed my last delivery date I called them and threatened to cancel and the rep said “Sure, Sir, let me do that after I reorder this item”. He figured it was quicker or reorder an item than wait for it to get back from across the state.

zarriak 8y ago
Amazon doesn't deliver the things you bought. I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. There is a reason designer stores exist. There are many reasons that Amazon as a company and service are bad but almost none of what you describe is a valid complaint.
- golf1052 8y ago
  Amazon does do deliveries. This is also a valid complaint. Amazon doesn't say don't order X, Y, or Z; they let you order anything. They just need to work harder on solving these issues because I've seen many other complaints like this.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Amazon logistics deliver at least 1/3 of the items I purchase from them. A "Prime" branded van literally pulls up to my house and someone who I assume works for Amazon drops the package on my stoop. > I don't understand why you are buying luxury goods off of Amazon when you aren't able to distinguish between counterfeit goods. I read this sentence four times and still don't quite understand it. Particularly in response to someone who said they tried to return an item to Amazon exactly because they realized it was counterfeit. Can you rephrase whatever it was you were trying to say there?

ryandrake 8y ago

Honestly, I'm shocked that in 2018, anyone believes anything they read in online reviews written by strangers on the Internet. It's got to be common knowledge by now that most of them are fake and often paid for, and that some companies manipulate which results you see based on not-quite-above-the-board criteria. Who actually takes these things seriously anymore?

BadassFractal 8y ago
I'm more interested why this isn't something that Amazon didn't decide to police. They know when someone purchases something from their store, they can limit reviews to those people who have many confirmed purchases from them and perhaps have some kind of human validation to them (showing ID?). Just spitballing here, but it seems like a solvable issue.

denzil_correa 8y ago

Another example of Campbell's Law playing out [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law

cs702 8y ago

Wow. The Facebook groups mentioned in the article have 87,000 members, who are offered full reimbursement of product costs in exchange for writing five-star reviews on Amazon. The only way to describe this is as a large-scale effort to deceive and defraud mass consumers. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

astrodust 8y ago
The only way to describe this is as an unfortunate inevitability of review systems as a whole.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- toss1 8y ago
  I'd say of unmoderated (or poorly moderated) review systems. E.g., we don't see this on Angie's List or Houzz. I've found that the only way to get useful information out of most Amazon reviews is to look at the 1- & 2-stars, trying to filter out the fake competitor hits, and see if there are any consistent issues that aren't DEU issues. Then look at the 3- & 4-stars and see what seems to be good. That said, I expect it'll only be a matter of time until this strategy is no good.
  - giancarlostoro 8y ago
    Another factor is reviews with pictures depending on what you are buying. In any case I cancelled Amazon prime. They wont be getting my money once my membership expires. I rather pay for a service thats worthwhile to me. I rather get my things at Walmart or BestBuy due to convenience and now BestBuy will price match Amazon.
    - mcpherrinm 8y ago
      For all the problems that Amazon has, there is a long history of Best Buy actively pushing consumer-harmful practises that I would still rate them a lower choice. The first one that comes to mind is forcing printer manufacturers to not bundle USB cables so they can separately sell them at a high markup

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago

Couldn't you post a five star review, get reimbursed, and then change your review to an honest one? Asking for a friend.

DominikPeters 8y ago
The offers on those Facebook groups all seem to ask for amazon profile name before agreeing on the deal, to check your reviewing history. I doubt your proposed scheme would be long-lived.
- i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
  So you have to be an honest fake reviewer. The irony.

acjohnson55 8y ago

The fantastic podcast Reply All did an episode on this a few months ago: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124 https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124

maximp 8y ago
I just heard this yesterday! Can second, great episode.
- iliis 8y ago
  So... Five stars then? ;) (But seriously, HN comments are actually great at recommending things.)
  - technofiend 8y ago
    Definitely HN is the latest in a long string of sites that were good until the general public discovered them, Reddit being the most recent example. You're right: love the suggestions here and I hope the signal : noise ratio remains favorable for a good long while.

qwerty2020 8y ago

Great planet money podcast on this [1] with owner of site [2] that tries to surface fake reviews. [1] https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370 https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... [2] https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/

electriclove 8y ago

Fakespot.com

BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
Reposting a comment I left elsewhere: There's no great reason to believe that fakespot is actually good at telling you when reviews are fake. Compare the absolute maximum that fakespot can ever do against the description given in the article, and you'll see that fakespot is no panacea. Fakespot can only ever catch a certain kind of low-effort fake review that is becoming less relevant as markets find new ways to cheat people.
deleted 8y ago
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DanielleMolloy 8y ago

I check Fakespot, and click on some reviewer profiles. The idiots doing full-time positive product reviewing are so easy to spot by their hilarious review history that you start to assume that Amazon doesn’t do anything against them on purpose. They also mainly flock on the crap within a single month or so (but this is one of many Fakespot metrics). I tried buying a new bicycle light last week and literally every product was crap with fake reviewing. After wasting an hour on this I ended up not buying from Amazon. Rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese crap and counterfeit industry on their platform is likely to become Amazon’s death if they don’t admit their mistake and turn the wheel now.

gesman 8y ago
Well said. Amazon is either going to clean their house or someone is going to do it for them.
delfinom 8y ago
Amazon rolled out the carpet for counterfeit when they mixed their inventory with seller inventory. Do not buy common automotive parts from Amazon. Really good chance you will get a knockoff part.
- DanielleMolloy 8y ago
  They have to clearly separate between Marketplace and Amazon again. Everything used to be fine when people knew from whom they bought at any time. They are removing the line in multiple ways right now (one of the worst being comingling).
anonymous5133 8y ago
Completely agree. I think a better way to get reviews now is just to type "(product name) review" into youtube. Seems more honest review. Stay away from anything that is Chinese product. Most of it is so sloppily made.
- mikehollinger 8y ago

kaffee 8y ago

Let's not forget that these fake reviews are being paid for. That's clearly better than non-paid-for fake reviews. That is, there's some friction for the malicious actors. Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. This is all to say that it looks like Amazon and others (e.g., Steam) are doing the right thing in requiring a verified purchase in order to leave a review. But it does seem like there's an easy improvement that Amazon could make: offer amnesty to people who report (after the fact) that they left a fake review. The review would be marked internally as fake (and this would impact rankings, etc.) but the vendor would be none the wiser.

antidesitter 8y ago
> Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. Incidentally, this was the motivation behind a PoW system called Hashcash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash.
- user111233 8y ago
  Bitmessage had this and it would burn up my laptop cpu trying to send a text message but spammers with gpu farms could still take out the whole network with no troubles.
  - cma 8y ago
    Seems like in a mature implementation your phone/laptop would route the message to a GPU farm and the work requirement could be scaled appropriately. And for whitelisted everyday contacts the computation cost could be zero.
jessriedel 8y ago
> Imagine how much less spam we would have if it cost 1 cent to send an email. Friction can do a lot of good. Except the spam email problem was solved without opening the door to another place where uninformed consumers could get nickle-and-dimed? Aren't we all glad the pay-for-email push failed?

abruzzi 8y ago

A bit off topic, but companies/organizations that use punctuation in their name make sentences look screwy. The organization in this article is “Which?” which the Guardian faithfully reproduces (without the quote I used). As a result, every time the name of the organization comes at the end of a sentence, the Guardian doesn’t end it with a period, they end it with a question mark. This made me go back and reread at least one sentence because I thought I misread it. I read the sentence as a statement, not a question (and it was a statement.)

howenterprisey 8y ago
Completely agreed. I think Wikipedia has the right idea for dealing with company names like this - use title case and omit anything that isn't pronounced. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trademarks#General_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Trad...
- joegahona 8y ago
  AP, CMS, and any other grown-up style guide would eschew goofy punctuation in company/brand/band names.
markdown 8y ago
Joomla!

z3t4 8y ago

Markets where you can not tell how good a product is simply by reading the technical spec or scientific tests, eg markets where fake reviews will have a strong impact is not a market you want to enter, because everyone is hustling and the price people are willing to pay will keep dropping.

a-dub 8y ago

This sort of thing seems pervasive these days. I see it on Yelp, Google Reviews and Amazon. (hell, the NYT has had pieces on people buying their competitors products en-masse just to give them 1-star reviews and move the relative needle in terms of Amazon reviews). It will have to be fixed though, it seems that buying things sight unseen only really works when you have a lot of evidence (reviews) that the product is good. Seems like a good way for an upstart to differentiate themselves.

perpetualcrayon 8y ago

*-star reviews on all of the major review sites are 2-dimensional. They should be 3 dimensional (0-x stars) + time. This way if clusters of 5-star reviews show up in an extremely short period of time it's a red flag. Instead of seeing a static "this product/service got x stars", we should be able to see "this product/service, within the last 1 month, received on average x stars". And then you can extrapolate, oh they received on average 2 stars before they upgraded their product, and now the product is getting 4 stars. Or something like: "this restaurant was getting on average 1.5 stars last year, but recently they're getting glowing reviews. Maybe they fired the manager?".

bootlooped 8y ago
Fake review services have already figured out how to slow-drip reviews. If you put a mediocre product on Amazon and buy reviews, there will be no legit review history to compare against either. It's a tough nut to crack if the fake reviews are linked to real purchases already.
- perpetualcrayon 8y ago
  I'd say by slow dripping the reviews won't they have to contend more with the "real" reviews? After all by pushing a bunch of 5 stars quickly the average will be bumped up substantially and be unaffected by real reviews. At least in this case they'll have to contend with legit reviews and will not be as easy to sprout all the way to the top of the search results for same reason.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
    It's the same no? If there are 10 times more fake reviews than legit ones and they can spread them over time, you can't use the distribution to detect it.
    - perpetualcrayon 8y ago
      I think there are probably a number of reasons it's different. 1) 1000 5-star reviews with maybe a handful of 3,2,1 star reviews trickling in as actual consumers realize their mistake is less of a signal not to buy than if I see another low review trickled in amongst the 10-20 5-star reviews. 2) The company defrauding by purchasing the reviews is not going to make their money back as quickly probably since they won't end up on top of search results as often. So these companies will be stretched a lot thinner and probably recoup their expenses a lot slower than if they start instantly showing up on top of peoples' search results. And in order to keep from "floating" a bunch of free stuff without reviews they'll have to be extremely coordinated about how they distribute their products and request recipients to provide the reviews in order to make it a worth while pursuit.

x0054 8y ago

Amazon is going downhill quickly. I target shoot with a compound bow as a hobby, and as a result I usually buy a set of arrows a year. In 2015 when I would search for "target arrows" on Amazon the first page results would be for legit American companies who make exceptional arrows for about $30 per set of 6. Now, and for the last 2 years if I search for "target arrows" I get pages and pages of Chinese crap arrows (I purchased several sets and returned them). The crappy ones are also selling for $30 per set but they are made out of weak aluminum and come bent up. To get the nice American made ones I have to got 10-20 pages deep or search by brand name and even than the real ones are usually on page 2 with page one featuring the same crap from China. Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure they can make quality arrows in China, but what makes it to the top of Amazon is utter crap. I noticed this with many other products as well, but the arrows is a particularly noticeable example because it's something I regularly replace as they get beat up and destroyed (I shoot a lot).

joelx 8y ago
I suggest Amazon solves this by requiring ALL purchasers to leave reviews of ALL products they buy. Or by adding a $10 fee to every purchase that can only be refunded by leaving a review.
- kakarot 8y ago
  That will just create a shitload of low-effort noise in between useful reviews.
- phakding 8y ago
  I don't think I would agree to that model. I wouldn't like my money being held hostage for a review. If they give me a dollar discount, on the other hand, I would be much inclined to leave a review.
  - eightysixfour 8y ago
    It is the same model, just semantics. Either way they are increasing the price of the product by some amount and decreasing it when you leave a review.

mancerayder 8y ago

A colleague recently pointed me to fakespot.com, where you paste the URL of a product (like an Amazon product) and (it seems) it does an ML type analysis to score the likelihood of fakeness in the aggregate of reviews with a score and then highlights the likely fake ones and why it thinks what it thinks. There's surely a market for verification for customers as much as there's one for the criminally-minded sellers.

shostack 8y ago
Which begs the question of why Amazon isn't offering this themselves, or doing it in the background in a way that prevents this from being the problem it is. I have to wonder at some level if in the short term this boosts their sales figures, but long term erodes trust in buying from them and diminishes their stranglehold. I used to trust Amazon reviews to the point I'd often not read a ton or research reviews else where before purchasing. These days I often opt to just buy from a retailer from a name brand. With Amazon increasing prices it often isn't much difference in price and there's better quality control. It has officially become a chore to buy something on Amazon if you care about doing any due diligence.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  I would guess that the reason that Fakespot works is that not too many people use it (relative to the total number of Amazon users) so people writing fake reviews don't specifically try to beat it. Anything Amazon is doing, the people writing fake reviews will specifically try to counter, so Amazon has a much harder job cut out for them.

failrate 8y ago

Ive been having a direct experience with follower bots on soundcloud. I'll post some weird music, and bots will immediately like or follow. I do not follow them back, so they unlike and unfollow.

jobigoud 8y ago
Yeah it looks like there is a "reputation economy", even for platforms where money is only indirect. Instagram auto follow/unfollow, Twitter followers, Youtube likes and subscribers, etc. You can buy likes/karma/points, followers/subscribers, and also whole accounts. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a burgeoning market for GitHub followers and stars so you can look good during background checks. Or that you could buy LinkedIn "acquaintances" and "skills" and even Facebook "friends". I'm worried about what's next. Rotten Tomatoes? GoodReads?

tinkerteller 8y ago

Even bigger issue on FB is fake ads. About 2 out of 3 ads I see are usually of some very bad product but with very attractive video and headline. I've seen people in my family buying often and getting regrets. Now I have developed muscle memory to absolutely not trust any product/sign ups on FB.

BadassFractal 8y ago

What are some solid sources of product reviews these days, where the reviewers are both competent and unbiased? I will occasionally go to sweethome or wirecutter, but I'm never sure if I'm just reading a well hidden PR piece from a sponsor or if this is their actual opinion.

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jliptzin 8y ago

Amazon is worth an enormous amount of money. They can afford to solve this problem. Here's one idea: invite regular amazon users with accounts active for at least > 1 year, who have some kind of verified identity/address, and ask them to become certified reviewers. Give them amazon credits/coupons in exchange for reviews of all the items they've purchased in the last 6-12 months (if they haven't yet left a review for those items). Don't pick people who have only been purchasing a few items from the same vendor. Find people who have a purchase history in line with the average user, not a company insider trying to game the system. This way you don't have this perverse practice of incentivizing people to leave positive reviews on items they want for free. If a reviewer is found to be fake/scamming the system, just remove all their reviews and block them from future reviews. It's time to stop allowing the raw internet to leave reviews. The scammers have won. Time to move on to a more sophisticated filtering system. This feels like email before gmail came along and largely solved spam. It'll get better again.

beckler 8y ago
It's probably more profitable to leave it the way it is... Which opens up the door for a competitor. Imagine if there was a different site that became known for its highly reliable ratings. It would eat Amazon's lunch and dinner.
- hef19898 8y ago
  The more I think about it the more potential weaknesses I see at Amazon that can be exploited by a competitor. At least in the traditional retail business, I cannot judge AWS.
cherioo 8y ago
You mean like Amazon Vine program?

whatever1 8y ago

I was looking in Amazon for a protective case for the iPhone XR that my SO has preordered. Apparently there are many cases and even more reviews of very happy customers (verified purchasers as per Amazon) who were making very positive comments on the perfect fit of the case (on a phone that is not yet on sale).

jobigoud 8y ago
Probably the inventory variant scam. They added the new case as a variant of older ones and got the reviews carried over.

codespeedy 8y ago

This is unrelated comment I know. But i did not found any suuport or FAQ on this site. Can anyone tell me why it's saying that I am still a new user so that I can't post anything on this site? how much time it will take to aactive my account?

AJRF 8y ago

I assume modern journalism is just the pursuit of the ability to conflate as many big tech names into one headline as possible. Jackpot for the Guardian here!

fetbaffe 8y ago

As a result I never trust five star reviews. I only trusts reviews that has some critism. IMDB is also a site that has gone downhill, filled with fake reviews.

pergadad 8y ago

"use the reporting tools" - as far as I'm aware there is no reporting tool for "this product is fake" and "this review looks fake". If they did want to fight fake reviews they would make reporting easy. They'd also not allow completely different products to be listed on the same page. ...

WindowsFon4life 8y ago

If this is such an obvious issue in E mercantile capitalism, then it seems an obvious choice for other places that money and power come into play.

thx11389793 8y ago

Protip: if you find a crap product that's being shilled for in the reviews, you can talk your way into getting paid decently for your silence. I know someone who was paid several hundred dollars to not leave a bad review for a something that cost under $50. One scathing review that exposes their scheme might lost them tens, maybe a hundred multiples of their unit profit margin.

mprev 8y ago
Or you could behave ethically and not allow yourself to be bought.

Tempest1981 8y ago

I use fakespot.com, and it’s surprising how often the ratings are deceptive. Just paste in any Amazon product URL. For iOS, this shortcut makes it easier: https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9id390/check_amazon_review_quality_with_fakespot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9id390/check_ama...

jobigoud 8y ago

Also this very interesting Planet Money episode #838 about people all over the world receiving weird packages full of random Chinese items that they never ordered. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/episode-838-a-series-of-mysterious-packages https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/epis... Turns out they are phantom packages from vendors on Ali Baba and TaoBao gaming the review system. This is called "brushing". They managed to interview a "brusher". So the brushers have to make themselves look completely real during the buying process, hesitating, clicking links from different vendors and only after a while select the actual item they target. To get the "verified purchase" tag something has to be mailed somewhere. But instead of the actual item the vendor sends a package with random stuff and sometimes they send these to addresses of previous unknowing international customers to make it look more real.

yAnonymous 8y ago

Amazon is now in the business of selling a lot of cheap crap instead of promoting quality articles. Everyone I ever talked to about this noticed it and most are looking for other ways to buy their stuff. They are also actively engaging in fraud by having up fake reviews for low quality prime articles and then closing the reviews for said articles so legit buyers can't review them. When you report it, you get the usual "we are looking into it", but nothing ever happens. You'd expect this kind of shady behavior from a company that is in financial trouble and I wonder how they'll deal with their tainted image going forward.

entropy_ 8y ago

I don't live in the US/UK/Europe so Amazon deliveries are things I pay a lot for and take a while to get to me. So when I buy something, I have to be damn sure I'm going to like it. That's lead to the following strategy: filter reviews to only look at 1-star and 2-star reviews and make sure you can live with it if all the things people say there end up being true. It's served me well so far and no amount of 5* reviews will change my decision to buy or not. Also, I look for things elsewhere, and only go to Amazon for buying, I don't use their search. That helps a lot as well

wilsonfiifi 8y ago

One way to solve this problem would be to create a curated directory of reputable sellers on amazon and just link to their products. Sprinkle some Algolia magic dust for search and voilà. Easier said than done but it’s a start. Actually it seems one site/app is doing that [0] haven’t tried it personally but they seem to have the right idea IMHO. Edit: I should have linked directly to their about page [1] [0] https://canopy.co [1] https://canopy.co/about

Gerardd 8y ago

Nowadays, going on Amazon for product hunt is equivalent to searching for a malware-free good quality torrent.

homero 8y ago

I despise Amazon now. Every search returns ads for Chinese fakes and other overpriced fba products. I absolutely love Costco and dream about having Costco prices and impeccable quality with Prime.

dmritard96 8y ago

On this post, many commentators seem convinced amazon will have issues resulting from lack of trust. Any leading indicators that would bring some credibility to this claim that anyone can share? In general, the HN community seems to be a bit more opinionated (and informed) than the average nonHN reader wrt privacy and other things that get attention in the tech circles. Always looking to understand the difference between HN community and the broader populace.

graphenus 8y ago

There's another side of the medal. Merchants that are trying to sell anything on Amazon have to have some positive reviews, otherwise their product will not be sold at all, even when the product is great. I guess that here two factors contribute, the product is being outranked by others, which have good reviews, and users not trusting such products. I totally see how in this chicken and egg problem merchants would choose to buy some fake reviews. Now, add the problem of lack of transparency in reviews, i.e. there's no record of rejected legitimate reviews, no record of removed reviews; and now you have a dysfunctional system. No one is happy about it, but it degrades both quality of Amazon and trust in it.