5 ms·
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 malici
by 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 agoBitmessage 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 agoSeems 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?
- bootlooped 8y agoIf you were a purveyor of fake reviews, you would want to track the reviews you peddled. It's knowable if reviews disappear over time. What would be the incentive to come clean to Amazon about your own fake reviews? I don't think the people who sell fake reviews are likely to grow a conscience spontaneously.
- TheRealDunkirk 8y ago> That is, there's some friction for the malicious actors. Fake reviews are just another form of marketing, like traditional junk mail. Making mail spammers pay postage doesn't seem to have changed the fact that most of the snail mail I get is junk, even in the digital age. Charge reviewers a quarter or a dollar to leave a review. If I was passionate enough -- one way or the other -- to leave a review, I'd pay it! I'll bet it would squelch the fake reviews overnight. Just tune the charge to find an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio.
- AdverseAffect 8y agoCharging for reviews doesn't solve anything. The company paying you for the review will then just reimburse you for the cost of the fake review as well. But you'd get rid of almost all honest reviewers
- Regardsyjc 8y agoI read somewhere that fake reviews are technically illegal in the USA. Reviewers who received a steep discount or for free are supposed to disclose based on some law supposedly- because it may be promotional. Like YouTubers, Twitch streamers, or influencers. I don't know what law this is but I'm sure if someone ever got angry enough at Amazon and hit them with a massive lawsuit to enforce the fake review problem, Amazon would probably fix it within a few months. Amazon's pretty proactive and they tend to respond best to lawsuits. I follow lawyers for Amazon sellers who sue or threaten to sue Amazon and/or Amazon sellers in the US.