4 ms·

My Bizarre Stint as an Amazon Reviewer for Hire

21 points by MindGods 6y ago

Havoc 6y ago
Anybody know whether the kindle book section is also being actively gamed to such an extent?
ideals 6y ago
If everyone already assumes reviews on Amazon are fake, is it unethical to make paid reviews on Amazon? If you lost your job from Covid, this sounds like a good way to make ends meet. The economics to make this work seem crazy. How many other people are being paid for reviews like this guy on the same product? How many fake reviews do you need to finally have the edge on your competitors who are also pumping their pages with fake reviews or is it endless stream of fake reviews? Where does it end?
- superhuzza 6y ago
  >The economics to make this work seem crazy. How many other people are being paid for reviews like this guy on the same product? The marginal cost to the suppliers is probably pretty low on average - sending a reviewer a $150 office chair doesn't cost them $150, which makes it a bit more reasonable as a tactic
- ebg13 6y ago
  > If everyone... This is a wildly false assumption based on being inside a tech bubble. In rounded terms, the set of customers who assume that Amazon reviews are fake is closer to nobody than to everybody. > is it unethical to make paid reviews on Amazon? Yes. The word for this is "fraud". Even if you believed that all of your reviews were 100% honest and objective, you'd just be deceiving yourself too if you didn't bear the cost.
cwkoss 6y ago
I think the argument that doing fake reviews on Amazon is 'bad behavior' or something to feel guilty about is laughable. Amazon is one of the most well capitalized businesses in the known history of the universe. Their credibility is not a public good. I think siphoning off value from the Moloch of Bezos's empire is probably a net societal good.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > I think the argument that doing fake reviews on Amazon is 'bad behavior' or something to feel guilty about is laughable. People don't think that it's bad behavior because it sullies Amazon's good name. People think that it's bad behavior because it's scamming other regular people so that you can make a quick buck. That's like the definition of anti-social behavior. > I think siphoning off value from the Moloch of Bezos's empire is probably a net societal good. "And who cares about all the other fools I'm personally scamming anyway! They should have been born me!" Maybe we could try to think of any other way to contribute to the decline of Amazon that _isn't_ directly scamming our neighbors.

21 points by MindGods 6y ago

Anybody know whether the kindle book section is also being actively gamed to such an extent?

If everyone already assumes reviews on Amazon are fake, is it unethical to make paid reviews on Amazon? If you lost your job from Covid, this sounds like a good way to make ends meet. The economics to make this work seem crazy. How many other people are being paid for reviews like this guy on the same product? How many fake reviews do you need to finally have the edge on your competitors who are also pumping their pages with fake reviews or is it endless stream of fake reviews? Where does it end?

superhuzza 6y ago
>The economics to make this work seem crazy. How many other people are being paid for reviews like this guy on the same product? The marginal cost to the suppliers is probably pretty low on average - sending a reviewer a $150 office chair doesn't cost them $150, which makes it a bit more reasonable as a tactic
ebg13 6y ago
> If everyone... This is a wildly false assumption based on being inside a tech bubble. In rounded terms, the set of customers who assume that Amazon reviews are fake is closer to nobody than to everybody. > is it unethical to make paid reviews on Amazon? Yes. The word for this is "fraud". Even if you believed that all of your reviews were 100% honest and objective, you'd just be deceiving yourself too if you didn't bear the cost.

cwkoss 6y ago

I think the argument that doing fake reviews on Amazon is 'bad behavior' or something to feel guilty about is laughable. Amazon is one of the most well capitalized businesses in the known history of the universe. Their credibility is not a public good. I think siphoning off value from the Moloch of Bezos's empire is probably a net societal good.

ebg13 6y ago
> I think the argument that doing fake reviews on Amazon is 'bad behavior' or something to feel guilty about is laughable. People don't think that it's bad behavior because it sullies Amazon's good name. People think that it's bad behavior because it's scamming other regular people so that you can make a quick buck. That's like the definition of anti-social behavior. > I think siphoning off value from the Moloch of Bezos's empire is probably a net societal good. "And who cares about all the other fools I'm personally scamming anyway! They should have been born me!" Maybe we could try to think of any other way to contribute to the decline of Amazon that _isn't_ directly scamming our neighbors.