6 ms·

Just use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ to validate Amazon scores of products. When you do it on HS100 it immediately gives you a warning: "Unn

by amai 8y ago

Just use https://reviewmeta.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ to validate Amazon scores of products. When you do it on HS100 it immediately gives you a warning: "Unnatural reviews possible" . Fakespot shows a Fakespot Grade F and a corrected rating of 1.3: https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-with-1080p-fhd-camera-5g-fpv-live-video-and-gps-return-home-function-rc-quadcopter-for-beginners-kids-adults-with-follow-me-altitude-hold-intelligent-battery https://www.fakespot.com/product/holy-stone-hs100g-drone-wit... It seems to me that Reviewmeta and FakeSpot do work. It is just Amazon that is too lazy to do anything against fake reviews.

josefresco 8y ago
To put this in perspective, the DJI Phantom 3 mostly passes: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ
brink 8y ago
So if I want to harm a competitor's product on ReviewMeta, review it a bunch of times, then delete the reviews. Got it. This is a crappy game of cat and mouse, and if producers are willing to exploit Amazon's system, they'll exploit ReviewMeta. The only thing that protects ReviewMeta at this point is that it's a niche service. It'd be nice to see a mechanism that recognizes trusted reviewers, but even that can be exploited I suppose.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Depends on how effective the corrected score mechanism is. If it's taking out the scores it deems fake then recalculating the score based on the remaining scores that campaign will only hurt their FakeSpot score while still leaving their overall score mostly intact. If they drop the score just because of fake reviews the attack would work but if it basically just filters out spam reviews it's much less attackable.
- ReviewMeta 8y ago
  That's not exactly how it would work. As stated on the reports, deleted reviews don't actually affect our adjusted rating or pass/fail/warn result. Technically speaking, of course ReviewMeta can be "gamed", but it would require much more effort on the part of the seller to generate reviews in such a way that it wouldn't set off any warnings on our side. Basically force them to be very deliberate in their efforts. It would just add yet another hoop for sellers to jump through, making it that much more difficult on their part.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Amazon can buy Fakespot etc with pocket change and integrate them in, maybe, weeks if not days. Why they don't is the question.
- hyperbovine 8y ago
  Why spend money when you can make money.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It'd be pointless. After a week or two, the review scams would figure out what signals Fakespot etc. use and adjust their behavior to evade. They don't bother now because there's no significant userbase for these tools. That'd change quickly if Amazon built it into their system.
glenneroo 8y ago
The last few pages of the article mentions this, not to mention the author tested multiple articles from Holy Stone. Here are some relevant quotes: > "I personally believe that somehow Holy Stone is able to game the system beyond what even Faskespot can detect. A DroneDJ source confirms that Holy Stone uses “black hat” techniques to game the system." > Among other tricks, Holy Stone is likely getting 100s of reviews from people who were provided product in exchange for a promise of a good review. These reviews pass the test as original reviews, but not the test of being unbiased reviews. I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating. That’s unheard of for drones. Unheard of unless you are looking at a Holy Stone drone.
Aunche 8y ago
Fakespot and reviewmeta seem to have a bunch of false positives. I recently looked up a hair brush on fakespot and it had an F because the reviews were too similar. Turns out there isn't too much variety in how you can describe a hair brush. The reviewers I looked at had bought a variety of items and gave varying scores, so I doubt they're fake. It's more accurate to read the reviews and see if they sound genuine. A numerical score for something qualitative isn't very useful anyways.
- crazcarl 8y ago
  I agree with you overall, but I'm curious - did you also go to the other items and read the reviews there, or run those items through fakespot? If you're going to create a fake account to promote your items, you could give your items 5* and then copy other reviews on other products exactly (including # of *s) to make the account look more legitimate.
- jrockway 8y ago
  The real problem is that the review aggregator sites don't have all the data that could possibly be available to them. For example, I wrote a 2 star review of an LED light bulb I bought on Amazon. Claimed to be 90+ CRI, was actually a garish green color with a little bit of red and blue thrown in. I measured it with a spectrophotometer and included the spectrum chart in my review. The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" or something. So any review aggregator is missing that genuine review, as is anyone browsing Amazon.com. For this reason, I don't trust _any_ reviews anymore. Amazon filters out the negative ones!
  - crescentfresh 8y ago
    > The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" Aww man this bums me out. I love the critical (detailed) reviews, they're the first thing I look for on amazon.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > "violating their guidelines" Any guesses as to what guidelines were violated?
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Thank you for this, I didn't know this website existed!
hippich 8y ago
In addition to obvious flaws others noted, these tools fails to catch a certain type of reviews manipulation: Try: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FTFFY24 https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FTFFY24 https://www.fakespot.com/product/28pcs-wood-burning-kit-creative-woodburner-set-with-adjustable-temperature-soldering-pyrography-woodburning-pen-embossing-carving-soldering-tips https://www.fakespot.com/product/28pcs-wood-burning-kit-crea... While fakespot gave D, it gave it for other reasons. What really happened there - seller completely replaced product on that page with another one. Read existing reviews to understand what is going on. One more example - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ - just read reviews to see how ridiculous it gets. Not all of them are easy to detect. This seller added soldering iron as a variation to a wood burning unit - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07D9H5H9Y https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07D9H5H9Y - even by reading reviews you can't easily figure out fakeness of it. (https://www.fakespot.com/product/vastar-wood-burning-kit-44pcs-soldering-pyrography-woodburning-pen-temperature-adjustable-with-embossing-carving-soldering-tips-7-stencils-2-pencils-stand-and-sharpener-blue https://www.fakespot.com/product/vastar-wood-burning-kit-44p... Fakespot gave A) This type of blackhat stuff happens right now right and left. It is even cheaper/quicker/easier than paying reviewers for reviews now.
- ReviewMeta 8y ago
  Just wanted to chime in about this issue. We call it "Review Hijacking" and we've been seeing it more and more. We're actually starting to keep a history of any product title changes and also show you the different product variations that are being reviewed. On your second example, (https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ), you can click the link under the picture that says "See 3 product variations" and it will show you exactly the breakdown of reviews that come from a log carrier bag and a nut milk bag... The first example is a little trickier since the first time we analyzed the product, the title had already been changed. (You can click on the "Title History" link for any product). We're working on being able to detect when these changes/variations are normal or being used to deceive shoppers. It's extremely easy for a human to immediately tell, but much harder to train a computer to do it. For example, a seller might have a t-shirt with different product variations: "Large Blue", "Medium Green". These are very different words, but obviously a legit reason to have a bunch of variations. Here's more info about Review Hijacking: https://reviewmeta.com/blog/amazon-review-hijacking/ https://reviewmeta.com/blog/amazon-review-hijacking/ and here's an article that BuzzFeed News recently did: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...

by amai 8y ago

josefresco 8y ago

To put this in perspective, the DJI Phantom 3 mostly passes: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B013U0F6EQ

brink 8y ago

So if I want to harm a competitor's product on ReviewMeta, review it a bunch of times, then delete the reviews. Got it. This is a crappy game of cat and mouse, and if producers are willing to exploit Amazon's system, they'll exploit ReviewMeta. The only thing that protects ReviewMeta at this point is that it's a niche service. It'd be nice to see a mechanism that recognizes trusted reviewers, but even that can be exploited I suppose.

rtkwe 8y ago
Depends on how effective the corrected score mechanism is. If it's taking out the scores it deems fake then recalculating the score based on the remaining scores that campaign will only hurt their FakeSpot score while still leaving their overall score mostly intact. If they drop the score just because of fake reviews the attack would work but if it basically just filters out spam reviews it's much less attackable.
ReviewMeta 8y ago
That's not exactly how it would work. As stated on the reports, deleted reviews don't actually affect our adjusted rating or pass/fail/warn result. Technically speaking, of course ReviewMeta can be "gamed", but it would require much more effort on the part of the seller to generate reviews in such a way that it wouldn't set off any warnings on our side. Basically force them to be very deliberate in their efforts. It would just add yet another hoop for sellers to jump through, making it that much more difficult on their part.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Amazon can buy Fakespot etc with pocket change and integrate them in, maybe, weeks if not days. Why they don't is the question.

hyperbovine 8y ago
Why spend money when you can make money.
ceejayoz 8y ago
It'd be pointless. After a week or two, the review scams would figure out what signals Fakespot etc. use and adjust their behavior to evade. They don't bother now because there's no significant userbase for these tools. That'd change quickly if Amazon built it into their system.

glenneroo 8y ago

The last few pages of the article mentions this, not to mention the author tested multiple articles from Holy Stone. Here are some relevant quotes: > "I personally believe that somehow Holy Stone is able to game the system beyond what even Faskespot can detect. A DroneDJ source confirms that Holy Stone uses “black hat” techniques to game the system." > Among other tricks, Holy Stone is likely getting 100s of reviews from people who were provided product in exchange for a promise of a good review. These reviews pass the test as original reviews, but not the test of being unbiased reviews. I also think Holy Stone must be doing something to appease unhappy customers in exchange for not providing a negative review. It’s just too good to be true. Just 6% of reviews of the HS100 have 1, 2, or 3-star rating. That’s unheard of for drones. Unheard of unless you are looking at a Holy Stone drone.

Aunche 8y ago

Fakespot and reviewmeta seem to have a bunch of false positives. I recently looked up a hair brush on fakespot and it had an F because the reviews were too similar. Turns out there isn't too much variety in how you can describe a hair brush. The reviewers I looked at had bought a variety of items and gave varying scores, so I doubt they're fake. It's more accurate to read the reviews and see if they sound genuine. A numerical score for something qualitative isn't very useful anyways.

crazcarl 8y ago
I agree with you overall, but I'm curious - did you also go to the other items and read the reviews there, or run those items through fakespot? If you're going to create a fake account to promote your items, you could give your items 5* and then copy other reviews on other products exactly (including # of *s) to make the account look more legitimate.
jrockway 8y ago
The real problem is that the review aggregator sites don't have all the data that could possibly be available to them. For example, I wrote a 2 star review of an LED light bulb I bought on Amazon. Claimed to be 90+ CRI, was actually a garish green color with a little bit of red and blue thrown in. I measured it with a spectrophotometer and included the spectrum chart in my review. The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" or something. So any review aggregator is missing that genuine review, as is anyone browsing Amazon.com. For this reason, I don't trust _any_ reviews anymore. Amazon filters out the negative ones!
- crescentfresh 8y ago
  > The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" Aww man this bums me out. I love the critical (detailed) reviews, they're the first thing I look for on amazon.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > "violating their guidelines" Any guesses as to what guidelines were violated?

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

Thank you for this, I didn't know this website existed!

hippich 8y ago

In addition to obvious flaws others noted, these tools fails to catch a certain type of reviews manipulation: Try: https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FTFFY24 https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FTFFY24 https://www.fakespot.com/product/28pcs-wood-burning-kit-creative-woodburner-set-with-adjustable-temperature-soldering-pyrography-woodburning-pen-embossing-carving-soldering-tips https://www.fakespot.com/product/28pcs-wood-burning-kit-crea... While fakespot gave D, it gave it for other reasons. What really happened there - seller completely replaced product on that page with another one. Read existing reviews to understand what is going on. One more example - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ - just read reviews to see how ridiculous it gets. Not all of them are easy to detect. This seller added soldering iron as a variation to a wood burning unit - https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07D9H5H9Y https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07D9H5H9Y - even by reading reviews you can't easily figure out fakeness of it. (https://www.fakespot.com/product/vastar-wood-burning-kit-44pcs-soldering-pyrography-woodburning-pen-temperature-adjustable-with-embossing-carving-soldering-tips-7-stencils-2-pencils-stand-and-sharpener-blue https://www.fakespot.com/product/vastar-wood-burning-kit-44p... Fakespot gave A) This type of blackhat stuff happens right now right and left. It is even cheaper/quicker/easier than paying reviewers for reviews now.

ReviewMeta 8y ago
Just wanted to chime in about this issue. We call it "Review Hijacking" and we've been seeing it more and more. We're actually starting to keep a history of any product title changes and also show you the different product variations that are being reviewed. On your second example, (https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ https://reviewmeta.com/amazon/B07FSW8VMQ), you can click the link under the picture that says "See 3 product variations" and it will show you exactly the breakdown of reviews that come from a log carrier bag and a nut milk bag... The first example is a little trickier since the first time we analyzed the product, the title had already been changed. (You can click on the "Title History" link for any product). We're working on being able to detect when these changes/variations are normal or being used to deceive shoppers. It's extremely easy for a human to immediately tell, but much harder to train a computer to do it. For example, a seller might have a t-shirt with different product variations: "Large Blue", "Medium Green". These are very different words, but obviously a legit reason to have a bunch of variations. Here's more info about Review Hijacking: https://reviewmeta.com/blog/amazon-review-hijacking/ https://reviewmeta.com/blog/amazon-review-hijacking/ and here's an article that BuzzFeed News recently did: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-review-reuse-fraud https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/amazon-rev...