6 ms·

Good idea. Thanks for making that site. I am an asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 5 star review from Amazon, using a fake account. Do you have a plan to stop brand

by julius 6y ago

Good idea. Thanks for making that site. I am an asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 5 star review from Amazon, using a fake account. Do you have a plan to stop brands from doing this to you?

msluyter 6y ago
This was the first question that occurred to me. Just a couple of days ago I needed to buy another iphone USB-lightning cable. If you want to get a sense of just how broken Amazon reviews are, try searching for one of these. It's a nightmare minefield of 4.7+ rated products that have these highly dubious 5 star ratings, but with a telltale sizeable chunk of recent 1 star reviews.[1] So I ended up having to also check various meta-review sites or other product review sites just to to buy a stupid cable. For certain product categories, reviews have become mostly noise. [1] I tend to discount really effusive, highly detailed 5 star reviews for basically mundane products. "This ethernet cable was both highly attractive and yet lighter than others I've bought in the past. I plugged it in and it immediately started working! I was amazed!"
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Positive reviews are noise for me on any product. For products I don't care enough about to do independent research, I evaluate them exclusively by reading 1 and 2 star reviews, ignoring the additional noise of "the product didn't ship on time" type reviews, and deciding if the specific complaints made in the rest are things I care about.
  - TT3351 6y ago
    Are you open to the possibility of competing brands bombarding decent products with negative reviews? FWIW, almost every [negative, because I'm trying to warn others about wasting money] Amazon review I leave is removed for arbitrary reasons set out by Amazon. They seem uninterested in contributions like "this mouse was $30 not 6 months ago, and the current $90 price tag is unconscionable. [LG G602 mouse]" The few times I've complained about shipping problems (as you suggest you've seen) they also removed those.
    - Cd00d 6y ago
      Well, you're not actually reviewing the product. Sure, I wouldn't mind a time series of the price history of an item esp in cases with large jumps. But, generally the point of reviews is to tell me about the product. I can do my own evaluation of what I am willing to pay.
      - TT3351 6y ago
        Hijacked product pages and price swings are two of Amazon Shopping's biggest vulnerabilities from my view. Do you know of a price history website/app like you're describing? Sounds like a very good idea.
        SifJar 6y ago
        camelcamelcamel [0] tracks price history for Amazon listings [0] https://camelcamelcamel.com/ https://camelcamelcamel.com/
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      If I’m reading your review of a mouse, I want to know how well the mouse worked. If I want to know the price history, I’ll go to camelcamelcamel. You telling me the mouse was cheaper before doesn’t help me decide which mouse to buy today.
    - _tom_ 6y ago
      Amazon is correctly removing your reviews, because neither of your examples are things that belong in product reviews. Do not leave price related reviews. The prices change daily. You may leave a bad review because you think the price is too high. Tomorrow the mouse may cost $10, but your one star review is still there ten years later. Shipping problems do not belong in product reviews. The listing is for a PRODUCT, shared by any number of amazon sellers. Amazon provides seller reviews to comment on seller's shipping problems. (If you are leaving these as seller reviews, then I apologize for assuming, and you are correct)
- gallamine 6y ago
  I've taken to running all my amazon purchases through fakespot dot com first. It's highly discouraging.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    They have a chrome extension FYI that shows their data/status on a product page on Amazon.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    > Amazon automatically provides you with the cheapest version of the product you’re looking at, Nice; thanks, Amazon. > even if it’s potentially fake. Yikes! Hope I don't get one of those! > Most of the time you cannot even return these items! That's just rubbish though, Amazon returns are so easy, if the price is only marginally lower elsewhere I'll order from Amazon just because - if necessary - returning is easy, third party or not. I'm not sure if I get the point of it, if I can't tell if the product's a 'fake', aren't I happy? If I can (and I'm not happy with it anyway) I'll just send it back?
ryandrake 6y ago
I think the ship has sailed on the trustworthiness of online reviews from rando people. Pretty much every store or review site that aggregates user-submitted content has done a poor job of removing spam and fake reviews, and people are finally starting to realize how worthless the ratings are. Even if someone does crack this nut and figures it out, they won't be believed because of how fake everything has been for the last 20 years. I think the best thing online stores can do at this point is just nuke all user-submitted ratings and reviews. They're 99% garbage.
- jaclaz 6y ago
  >I think the best thing online stores can do at this point is just nuke all user-submitted ratings and reviews. They're 99% garbage. Yes, in order to re-start, but what then? The whole user reviews concept is bonkers, I would add that there are - besides "fake" reviews - "real" ones BUT written by clueless people (in good faith, but completely disconnected from an objective rating), and in this it is also way off the "5 star" rating where 4 stars are already "not so good".
  - SamBam 6y ago
    I think the "restart" goes back to trusted reviewers/companies offering reviews as their business. E.g. Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, etc. Then it's entirely how much you trust the reviewers, and whether you agree with their matrics/tastes.
    - tunesmith 6y ago
      Maybe there should be leagues of reviewer companies that can get promoted and relegated, based off of how well their reviews align to purchasing boosts and complaints. That's probably a horrible idea. I really like wire cutter but they convinced me to buy an awesome convection toaster oven that takes seven minutes to lightly toast a piece of bread on its highest setting.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    My "favorite" useless review is the "I just got it and unboxed it. I haven't used it yet, but I know it's going to be good!" five star review. How I hate those.
Vaslo 6y ago
Ever try fakespot?
- xenocratus 6y ago
  It might be my cynicism talking, but I've started distrusting these meta-review platforms as well. I've used fakespot quite a bit, but I don't have the time to investigate them and figure out where exactly the money is coming from to power the website and company behind it. Could it not be easily used to distort perceptions of listings based on who pays Fakespot more?
loceng 6y ago
"I am a competing asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 1 star review from Amazon to make your good product sound bad."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Adferdfqwer 6y ago
Suuwuw
gleenn 6y ago
How about, for someone to post a review, you have to take a picture of yourself with the product. But before you take the picture, you get randomly assigned a number. You must post a picture with that number in the photo. Then either do magic machine learning to check, or have a review process. Better, have it be manual. Get more people in the process, not less. I think this is an awesome idea, which would be completely ruined by fake reviews, but I'd feel much safer if there were like 1/10th the number of products but knew with certainty that a real human vetted and cared about that specific review.
- verroq 6y ago
  How does this prevent shill reviews?
hubraumhugo 6y ago
Fake reviews are certainly a big challenge. I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is in the Buy For Life community. As mentioned by others, people trust reviews on Reddit, I try to achieve the same. I could also imagine picking reviewers by interviewing them initially - someone who owns and uses the product for a while.
- nacs 6y ago
  > I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is But theres a problem with that: people create an account, build up their reputation for a while posting credible reviews then when they're large enough and have a good rep/trust, start taking money for their reviews. A similar thing happens on Reddit -- people build up an account to have lots of karma (sometimes they're literally just bot accounts reposting tons of posts), build it up for a few months, then sell the whole account off for money after the account has 100s of thousands of upvotes/karma.

by julius 6y ago

Good idea. Thanks for making that site. I am an asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 5 star review from Amazon, using a fake account. Do you have a plan to stop brands from doing this to you?

msluyter 6y ago

This was the first question that occurred to me. Just a couple of days ago I needed to buy another iphone USB-lightning cable. If you want to get a sense of just how broken Amazon reviews are, try searching for one of these. It's a nightmare minefield of 4.7+ rated products that have these highly dubious 5 star ratings, but with a telltale sizeable chunk of recent 1 star reviews.[1] So I ended up having to also check various meta-review sites or other product review sites just to to buy a stupid cable. For certain product categories, reviews have become mostly noise. [1] I tend to discount really effusive, highly detailed 5 star reviews for basically mundane products. "This ethernet cable was both highly attractive and yet lighter than others I've bought in the past. I plugged it in and it immediately started working! I was amazed!"

0xffff2 6y ago
Positive reviews are noise for me on any product. For products I don't care enough about to do independent research, I evaluate them exclusively by reading 1 and 2 star reviews, ignoring the additional noise of "the product didn't ship on time" type reviews, and deciding if the specific complaints made in the rest are things I care about.
- TT3351 6y ago
  Are you open to the possibility of competing brands bombarding decent products with negative reviews? FWIW, almost every [negative, because I'm trying to warn others about wasting money] Amazon review I leave is removed for arbitrary reasons set out by Amazon. They seem uninterested in contributions like "this mouse was $30 not 6 months ago, and the current $90 price tag is unconscionable. [LG G602 mouse]" The few times I've complained about shipping problems (as you suggest you've seen) they also removed those.
  - Cd00d 6y ago
    Well, you're not actually reviewing the product. Sure, I wouldn't mind a time series of the price history of an item esp in cases with large jumps. But, generally the point of reviews is to tell me about the product. I can do my own evaluation of what I am willing to pay.
    - TT3351 6y ago
      Hijacked product pages and price swings are two of Amazon Shopping's biggest vulnerabilities from my view. Do you know of a price history website/app like you're describing? Sounds like a very good idea.
      - SifJar 6y ago
        camelcamelcamel [0] tracks price history for Amazon listings [0] https://camelcamelcamel.com/ https://camelcamelcamel.com/
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    If I’m reading your review of a mouse, I want to know how well the mouse worked. If I want to know the price history, I’ll go to camelcamelcamel. You telling me the mouse was cheaper before doesn’t help me decide which mouse to buy today.
  - _tom_ 6y ago
    Amazon is correctly removing your reviews, because neither of your examples are things that belong in product reviews. Do not leave price related reviews. The prices change daily. You may leave a bad review because you think the price is too high. Tomorrow the mouse may cost $10, but your one star review is still there ten years later. Shipping problems do not belong in product reviews. The listing is for a PRODUCT, shared by any number of amazon sellers. Amazon provides seller reviews to comment on seller's shipping problems. (If you are leaving these as seller reviews, then I apologize for assuming, and you are correct)
gallamine 6y ago
I've taken to running all my amazon purchases through fakespot dot com first. It's highly discouraging.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  They have a chrome extension FYI that shows their data/status on a product page on Amazon.
- OJFord 6y ago
  > Amazon automatically provides you with the cheapest version of the product you’re looking at, Nice; thanks, Amazon. > even if it’s potentially fake. Yikes! Hope I don't get one of those! > Most of the time you cannot even return these items! That's just rubbish though, Amazon returns are so easy, if the price is only marginally lower elsewhere I'll order from Amazon just because - if necessary - returning is easy, third party or not. I'm not sure if I get the point of it, if I can't tell if the product's a 'fake', aren't I happy? If I can (and I'm not happy with it anyway) I'll just send it back?

ryandrake 6y ago

I think the ship has sailed on the trustworthiness of online reviews from rando people. Pretty much every store or review site that aggregates user-submitted content has done a poor job of removing spam and fake reviews, and people are finally starting to realize how worthless the ratings are. Even if someone does crack this nut and figures it out, they won't be believed because of how fake everything has been for the last 20 years. I think the best thing online stores can do at this point is just nuke all user-submitted ratings and reviews. They're 99% garbage.

jaclaz 6y ago
>I think the best thing online stores can do at this point is just nuke all user-submitted ratings and reviews. They're 99% garbage. Yes, in order to re-start, but what then? The whole user reviews concept is bonkers, I would add that there are - besides "fake" reviews - "real" ones BUT written by clueless people (in good faith, but completely disconnected from an objective rating), and in this it is also way off the "5 star" rating where 4 stars are already "not so good".
- SamBam 6y ago
  I think the "restart" goes back to trusted reviewers/companies offering reviews as their business. E.g. Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, etc. Then it's entirely how much you trust the reviewers, and whether you agree with their matrics/tastes.
  - tunesmith 6y ago
    Maybe there should be leagues of reviewer companies that can get promoted and relegated, based off of how well their reviews align to purchasing boosts and complaints. That's probably a horrible idea. I really like wire cutter but they convinced me to buy an awesome convection toaster oven that takes seven minutes to lightly toast a piece of bread on its highest setting.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  My "favorite" useless review is the "I just got it and unboxed it. I haven't used it yet, but I know it's going to be good!" five star review. How I hate those.

Vaslo 6y ago

Ever try fakespot?

xenocratus 6y ago
It might be my cynicism talking, but I've started distrusting these meta-review platforms as well. I've used fakespot quite a bit, but I don't have the time to investigate them and figure out where exactly the money is coming from to power the website and company behind it. Could it not be easily used to distort perceptions of listings based on who pays Fakespot more?

loceng 6y ago

"I am a competing asshole. I copy&pasted a fake 1 star review from Amazon to make your good product sound bad."

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Adferdfqwer 6y ago

Suuwuw

gleenn 6y ago

How about, for someone to post a review, you have to take a picture of yourself with the product. But before you take the picture, you get randomly assigned a number. You must post a picture with that number in the photo. Then either do magic machine learning to check, or have a review process. Better, have it be manual. Get more people in the process, not less. I think this is an awesome idea, which would be completely ruined by fake reviews, but I'd feel much safer if there were like 1/10th the number of products but knew with certainty that a real human vetted and cared about that specific review.

verroq 6y ago
How does this prevent shill reviews?

hubraumhugo 6y ago

Fake reviews are certainly a big challenge. I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is in the Buy For Life community. As mentioned by others, people trust reviews on Reddit, I try to achieve the same. I could also imagine picking reviewers by interviewing them initially - someone who owns and uses the product for a while.

nacs 6y ago
> I introduced a credibility system for every user, similar to Reddit's karma so people can see how trustworthy the user is But theres a problem with that: people create an account, build up their reputation for a while posting credible reviews then when they're large enough and have a good rep/trust, start taking money for their reviews. A similar thing happens on Reddit -- people build up an account to have lots of karma (sometimes they're literally just bot accounts reposting tons of posts), build it up for a few months, then sell the whole account off for money after the account has 100s of thousands of upvotes/karma.