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Almost 40% of U.S. Consumers Trust Online Reviews Less Than They Did 5 Years Ago

• JustSomeNobody 6y ago
  So, at what point does this become a problem for Amazon (for example)? They _seem_ to not care.
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    AmazonBasics seems like a way to build brand-name recognition in the face of untrusted online reviews. Clearly Amazon cares. Not enough to fix the problem, but enough to build a new brand of white-label goods. If anything, untrusted reviews is to the benefit of the AmazonBasics brand. -------- Amazon Reviews are a benefit to the 3rd party marketplace, more so than anything else. Buying non-branded goods from unknown (or nearly unknown) brands. I'm not entirely sure to see how, or why, untrusted Amazon reviews is Amazons' problem.
  • TinyRick 6y ago
    When it affects their bottom line. Consumers largely _seem_ to not care either, and continue buying from Amazon.
  • iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
    I've stopped using amazon for anything unless either I already know exactly what it will be or if its throwaway and I dont care. Even books now are often something that looks like it was printed on photocopy paper from a word processor. I think amazon is converging to its niche (maybe not a niche if there is ~a trillion in annual revenue at stake) as a Walmart replacement. For instances where quality matters, I think they are already off the table for many people.
    • walshemj 6y ago
      Or check out amazon first and go direct to alternate sites in the UK there are sites like Book Depository for books or Weyland Games for 40K gear 4 music for sound cards etc.
  • fullshark 6y ago
    When they stop growing and decide fixing it is the way to win market share against Costco etc / Direct to Consumer purchasing.
  • kansface 6y ago
    Does Walmart care about low quality products? Or alternatively, what would an online marketplace that avoids fraud, intentionally low quality reproductions, or just low quality products in general look like? We'd really like to align the incentives of the reviewers with potential buyers. One way to achieve that would be to pay reviewers as judged by the people who buy the product from the service. There are a few problems here, like there not being much incentive to review low volume products, or manufacturers introducing 10k variations that differ by a single letter in a GUID (monitors/tvs), or a change in the quality of the product itself. These sound tractableish. Outstanding questions: does the math add up such that the incentive of maintaining a high quality platform is larger than the incentive for manufacturers to defect (signal high quality and cheat). Can we pass on that win to reviewers? Other thoughts: we can't punish manufacturers for cheating because its too easy for their competitors to abuse.
  • Finnucane 6y ago
    I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in over a year, for various reasons, but the general untrustworthiness is a factor. On the other hand, while the problem is particularly bad for Amazon, it isn't exclusive to them. It has generally become difficult to find reliable information about products. So I tend to stick with stuff I know, and buy direct as much as possible.
  • paxys 6y ago
    Amazon realized long ago that selling cheap Chinese-made products (whether real or fake) isn't the future of the company. Something is only a real problem if it affects their first-party products and services ecosystem (Echo, Alexa, Fire, Kindle, Audible, Ring, Prime, Video, Whole Foods, Fresh).
• quxbar 6y ago
  The other 60% are simply not paying attention.
  • usrusr 6y ago
    The other 60% claim that they were already at zero trust in 2016. I think that they are exaggerating their distrust and I reject the idea that there could be a third option.
• 99_00 6y ago
  Every product I order from Amazon from a Chinese brand has an offer for a free 'gift' for leaving a good review.
  • duxup 6y ago
    That and requests to delete my review in exchange for a refund.
    • elliekelly 6y ago
      Then it's only a matter of time before consumers start gaming the system right back. Write a poor review, await a refund offer, then write the real review.
      • FireBeyond 6y ago
        Well the flip side to this scam too is now I start seeing hints in the reviews. "Edit: I left this review a month ago, and I have not seen the 'special gift' that the seller promised for my help"
      • dawnerd 6y ago
        Then find out Amazon wont accept your real review because it 'doesn't meet their community standards'
        • jjoonathan 6y ago
          Yep, can't let the word spread that someone peed in the co-mingling pool. That might cause a panic! Also: can't let the word spread that "prime" shipments get silently substituted for 30-day slow-steamed-in-a-containers-and-then-USPS shipments. That wouldn't reflect fairly on the product! Ugh.
    • kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      I don't even get that courtesy. Amazon deletes legitimate negative reviews all the time without the seller having to make amends.
• everdrive 6y ago
  As well they should. This is a game of cat and mouse. Consumers were ahead for a little while, but companies have really gotten a grasp on the internet, and they're winning the information war. It's no mistake that I've come to rely on brand name again. It's the best heuristic available to me. When all this first started (mid-2000s) I was actively avoiding basing ANY decision on brand name. For a brief window, I had better information, but no more.
  • sharkweek 6y ago
    I used to trust Amazon for just about anything I needed to buy, but I'd guess maybe in the last 6-8 years I'll mostly only order something if I recognize the brand name selling me the product. Tried to buy a pair of cheap-ish bluetooth headphones off there a few months ago. Three different pairs and none of them even worked out of the box. Gave up and bought a more expensive pair from a known brand.
    • depingus 6y ago
      You can't trust ANYTHING on Amazon; including name brand. They co-mingle their legit inventory with counterfeit 3rd party inventory. When you order something, even if it's "Sold and Shipped from Amazon", they ship you the closest product. You may very well end up getting the fake 3rd party item.
      • everybodyknows 6y ago
        Also ship damaged, repackaged goods as “new”, e.g. monitor with scratched screen. Solution: Order monitor from Staples, insist employee open box for inspection. Cost an extra $20 over Amazon — bargain!
      • cout 6y ago
        If it's Amazon brand (e.g. Kindle), I'd be surprised to get a counterfeit. I also trust less popular brands to not be counterfeit, though I expect that to change in the future.
    • AJ007 6y ago
• williesleg 6y ago
  Nothing is UL listed anymore. AI bots and Chinese and Indian cheap labor reviews are everywhere. Same with postings, even to hacker news. Hard to know what's human and what's not anymore.
• BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I invite people to checkout BestBuy's online shop. Just about every single item has a rating from 4.0 to 4.8 out of 5. I have yet to see a single listing under 4 stars. There are of course, unrated items, but can you honestly believe that virutally every product they carry is nearly perfect? Who actually writes a 5 star review for a no-name brand of tape and cable ties? When everything is perfect, nothing is, and I don't trust BestBuy's review system at all. I can't help but think there is some kind of false advertising law against fake reviews that they're breaking.
  • undefined1 6y ago
    and Doordash. how is everything >4? are we really to believe that McDonalds has a rating of 4.6 out of 5? it makes the system completely useless.
    • ssharp 6y ago
      If you order McDonalds, you probably know what McDonalds should taste like. If it meets 100% of your expectations, why would you rate it lower? Similarly, if I get a meal from Michelin Star rated restaurant and it fails to meet my high expectations, should it get a better rating than McDonald's just because the restaurants meal was still likely much better than McDonald's even if it failed to meet expectations?
      • BitwiseFool 6y ago
        In practical terms it dilutes the value of 4 and 5 star reviews for other restaurants. There's some cognitive dissonance involved when McDonald's gets a 4.6/5 and a mom and pop haute-cuisine restaurant gets a 4.6/5 as well. These are two very different dining experiences but they are being judged using the same system and feels inaccurate.
        • spaetzleesser 6y ago
          For what McDonalds is they probably deliver a 5 star review the way their customers see it. You probably have to divide restaurants into different categories and compare within them. I beat a lot of people will rate MCDonalds higher than haute cuisine restaurants even in direct comparison. There is no absolute rating for restaurants.
• tehjoker 6y ago
  Companies undermining consumer reviews undermines the justification for consumer capitalism. The idea is supposed to be that a merchant sells a product that solves some problem real or imagined at a given quality level. The consumer is supposed to be able to make a fair evaluation of the quality and fitness of the product and compare it with their budget and the item's price and make a decision. If companies systematically and intentionally destroy the consumer's ability to do this, then why should their state charters even be valid?
• mumblemumble 6y ago
  I also don't particularly trust professional reviews anymore. The affiliate link funding model has set up a glaring conflict of interest.
  • yborg 6y ago
    Consumer Reports. That's literally it.
    • monkeybutton 6y ago
      Are they still influential? They're something I associate with my parent's generation and the era of print magazines.
      • mumblemumble 6y ago
        They won't influence you if you don't subscribe, of course. I used to subscribe, my sense is that they do a good job, but their tastes are geared toward those of more affluent boomers and genxers. If you're someone who can't afford a Lexus, or who'd even consider choosing a Kia over a Lexus even though you can easily afford one, then Consumer Reports may not cater to your tastes.
        • Mc91 6y ago
          I subscribe to their web site. Because my father subscribed and liked it, and I find it useful as well - also my former team lead was a lead there for a while. It is $40 a year. They do surveys of consumers as well as do their own testing. About once a year they survey about vacuum cleaners - I had to buy one recently, and some brands got high grades, other low grades - so I bought a Shark vacuum cleaner. A few years ago I needed to buy an air conditioner and used CR for that as well. I also needed a laptop in a hurry and CR was one source I consulted (although I consulted several sources). $40 a year is worth it to me to get a decent air conditioner and vacuum cleaner and such at a decent price (and laptop, although CR was just once of the consulted sources). The Shark vacuum cleaner was the last item I bought and it picks up dirt good, is easy to empty, and can vacuum rugs as well as things that need the hose to vacuum.
• OhSoHumble 6y ago
  I recently bought some sheets. Actually sorting through the sheets on Amazon was a hassle because 90% of the reviews would be obviously fake "best sheets I've ever slept on - 5 stars" and the remaining 10% would be 1-3 star reviews that would be photographs of poor fabric or tears in the arriving product. It is almost impossible to buy quality goods online and I'm afraid that is just going to get worse.
  • niklasd 6y ago
    What is also strange is when comparing "different" offerings they sometime turn out to be exactly the same product, just with a slightly different picture/text and a (sometimes substantial) price difference. For products like iPhone cases it feels like there is one factory in China which produces a few different models, which lead to the 200 offerings you'll see when searching for one at Amazon.
    • jxramos 6y ago
      this, it's product representation dilution. When things go sour a new listing is made with a different name, edited photos, and same product. Amazon is so polluted with noise like this we've started to shift our business elsewhere.
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Making something in a factory is skill and there are scale factors. You can buy a lawn mower from dozens of different companies, but the vast majority are made in one factory. If you want to sell lawnmowers you just need to order some quantity (I'm guessing 1000) and they will paint their standard mower with your colors and got to word and substitute your name in the manual. Easy enough for them to do and they don't need to worry about marketing at all. Nearly all store brands are the same way. A lot of other brand name products are also the same. That iPhone case factory will probably make any patter you want. Don't assume though that store bands are the same quality. There are some choices. They can use thicker metal in lawn mowers for quality. They can use source plastics of different qualities for the iphone cases. However the price isn't that much different and so sometimes the expensive products are the lowest quality.
• whalesalad 6y ago
  Would love to see a 'social score' come back a-la Klout, but not Klout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout Instead of measuring how powerful or influential you are - it could instead be used to prove your honesty, trustworthiness, identity in some kind of anonymous way, etc...
  • paxys 6y ago
    Variants of this have existed forever. Here's what will happen – I spend years writing great reviews and building up a good score. People trust me, I become famous in the community. Brands start to vie for my attention. A shitty company comes along and offers me $1 million in exchange for a good review. What incentive do I have to turn it down?
• kull 6y ago
  Reviews and rankings are broken across the industries. For products I usually start my journey at NYT Wirecutter https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/. I was also recently looking for a place at Apartments.com, as I learned all places get 5 star ranking to start, and it’s of course not clear at all in the UX. I think at the moment google maps does pretty good job with rankings.
  • JoshTko 6y ago
    I trust them a bit less these days. Seems that at least some of their products are pay to play. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25993512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25993512
  • mumblemumble 6y ago
    I'm finding Wirecutter to be less-than-useful, though. There's the question marks around their funding model, but the deeper problem is their "the best X" format. It requires setting up a very specific rubric that tends to favor Cadillac models, and leaves you with very little information to go on if you don't have Cadillac needs. Concrete example: I recently bought a new office chair. My shopping process involved a lot of reading reviews and a lot of sitting in actual chairs. The chair I ended up with, an Ikea Långfjäll, wasn't even considered by Wirecutter because it lacks a lot of adjustability features. But there are a lot of truly independent reviews (by which I mean, people talking on Web forums or mentioning the chair they use on their personal blogs) with the general consensus being, "This chair is fantastic if it fits your body and you don't need/want all the bells and whistles." A couple people even said they happily switched to it from an Aeron chair or similar. Which describes me well enough, insofar as my office was supplying me with Herman Miller love up until the pandemic hit. So, all in all, I'm loving this chair. But, if I were constrained to the Wirecutter "The best X" format, I wouldn't include it, either, because its lack of adjustability means it just won't be suitable for lots and lots and lots of people.
    • TRcontrarian 6y ago
      The funding model is extremely sus. I used to trust them but your criticisms are right on, and their 'the best x' lists have a curious tendency to prioritize brands that already have high ad spend, rather than surface little known indie choices.
• Blackthorn 6y ago
  You can't even search for information about products anymore. All that shows up is affiliate spam pages that read like they were generated from a ML algorithm.
  • umvi 6y ago
    It's infuriating. I've noticed the auto-generated pages especially when searching using patterns of the form "X vs. Y". Half the links will just be auto-generated pages that show the specs side by side along with some ML-tinged paragraphs above to make it seem like the article was written by a human. (but after reading a few sentences it obviously wasn't)
  • ChrisLTD 6y ago
    This is what's going to kill the search engine ad market if the algorithm designers aren't careful.
• nixarian 6y ago
  Honestly can you even trust something like an HN comment? How many times do you see someone spouting corporate-favored opinions as if they were truth? Sure, they could just be delusional libertarians, but there are times when it stretches credulity.
• JoshTko 6y ago
  Just had an Amazon vendor offer me the full value of my purchase (in Amazon gift cards) to change my review from 3 stars to four. On one hand, it's great customer service, but on the other the product is still really a three star product.
  • rsync 6y ago
    Well, did you ?
• meddlepal 6y ago
  I basically always go to Reddit now for reviews... even if companies are astroturfing their as well, there's usually more honesty in the reviews than whatever is on the vendor's site.
  • spoonjim 6y ago
    If you are going to Reddit then they are going to Reddit.
    • esturk 6y ago
      If they're going to Reddit, they'll have to put in a lot more effort than just using bots to post fake reviews. For some subreddits like r/BuyItForLife, it's not about the number of upvotes. Some people just gravitates toward old fashion goods.
      • spoonjim 6y ago
        Yes but one Reddit comment has a lot more weight right now because of the ease of astroturfing, so it doesn’t need to be a Bot. Someone posts a Swiss Army knife and someone else might say, “I love my Swiss Army Knife that my grandfather left me. Oddly enough my aunt thought it was lost and bought me a knockoff from Amazon and it actually works better than my grandfather’s knife.” Then someone replies saying “what was the brand?” Then the person replies with a picture of the knife with the lettering in tatters saying “QUINIPO” or one of those Chinese brand names. Boom
        • meddlepal 6y ago
          with Reddit tho you can look through a users post history to see how likely they are a bot. I'm not saying its perfect by any stretch.
          • spoonjim 6y ago
            And there is a market for buying up old Reddit accounts for that. People cultivate karma on Reddit accounts posting about cats and memes and then sell them to brands looking to appear authentic.
• paxys 6y ago
  I recently ordered delivery from a highly-rated restaurant on Yelp. In the bag was a $10 off coupon for the next order if I left a 5-star review and sent them a screenshot. I reported it to Yelp, but to my knowledge nothing has changed. This is the state of online ratings and reviews today.
• coding123 6y ago
  Maybe re-phrase the question - I ONLY trust negative reviews now. The key is to see how many people have negative reviews and then scan them. Let's say I am interested in a BBQ Grill. 10 reviews about an open box/returned box? I'll probably go to a local CampingWorld and pick it up instead of Amazon and pay the extra $50. 4 people say the grill grate is bent but there are 1200 other reviews that don't seem to have a problem? Low chance I'm going to get the bent grill grate. Things like that.
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    What if those 1200 other reviews were bought from a Facebook review farm? https://www.amzfinder.com/blog/top-100-facebook-groups-list-amazon-reviews/ https://www.amzfinder.com/blog/top-100-facebook-groups-list-... There are a ton of Facebook groups out there whose sole purpose is to shove $$$ into paid reviews on Amazon (or Yelp, or other review sites). Could be a bunch of college kids looking to make a quick buck, or maybe some broken-English dude from some 3rd world country who actually made it their full time job. I don't know, but that's not the point. The point is: you can literally buy Amazon reviews (or Yelp reviews, or ... any kind of review really) from Facebook groups, if you know where to look.
    • bombcar 6y ago
      What I look for is bad reviews that indicate to me the problem is PEBKAC - nobody is buying bad reviews, but if the only real complaint is that when someone dropped it on their toes it hurt, then it's probably OK. But more and more I lean toward "if I have to get it from Amazon it needs to be something I'd be happy with being crap".
      • dragontamer 6y ago
        > nobody is buying bad reviews https://usasocialmediaservices.com/services/buy-negative-facebook-reviews/ https://usasocialmediaservices.com/services/buy-negative-fac... Going price of negative reviews (that lean positive to sell the product) is $10 for 5 reviews. A mix of good, medium, and bad reviews "naturally" sells a product. You can literally buy astroturfing for your products these days on the cheap.
• briga 6y ago
  I've found that instead of looking for positive reviews I'll first search for negative reviews. Can't really trust the professional reviewers because they have an incentive to bend the truth. But you also can't really trust casual reviewers because it's so easy to game the system. Sometimes I'll look at places like Reddit for product reviews but you can't even really trust that anymore because more and more companies have started to understand the value of viral marketing on social media. So it seems like the only thing you can really trust are the negative reviews.
  • breckenedge 6y ago
    And you can’t really trust those either since companies will review competitor’s products negatively. These days I just ask coworkers and friends and family
    • flanbiscuit 6y ago
      Yeah the whole system is gamed. This is my process: - check out the reviews that actually post pictures - read the 1-stars to see what happened. - Do a google search for "best X product" to see if product shows up there. Sift through the many many bullshit sites set up to make money from Amazon affiliate links. Sometimes a result sticks out that I feel like I can easily trust, like if I'm looking for hiking equipment and an REI links shows up. Even the NY Times has a whole product review section and has amazon affiliate links: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/ - Look for YouTube video reviews. I know a lot of those are free products provided to YouTubers so I take any positive reviews by them with a grain of salt. I just want to see the product in use. - Check out Reddit. Also take these with some scrutiny because Reddit has already been infiltrated by marketing companies willing to pay for fake reviews & upvotes - Check FakeSpot and ReviewMeta to see what they say - Analysis paralysis sets in. Are the good reviews fake? Are the bad reviews from competitors? Did the websites reviewing the products actually review it or just searched the top 10? - Walk away for a day or 2 - Go back to the product, and decide to gamble and buy one of the top results in Amazon. It's so annoying
      • 6y ago
• JohnTHaller 6y ago
  Tons of Amazon vendors pay for reviews. Either a direct offer ahead of time (buy this product, give it a 5 star review, we pay you via PayPal), an offer in the box (give us a good review and we'll give you a free product!), or in response to a bad review (delete your review and we'll give you a refund). This is expected behavior now on Amazon. Amazon doesn't ever seem to penalize these vendors as they keep making Amazon money. They will, however, ban customers from leaving reviews once they have engaged in this. And prevent users from posting reviews mentioning things like receiving counterfeit products (had this happen to me).
• mchusma 6y ago
  This is great news!
• gallamine 6y ago
  A fun anecdote from my wife: 6 years ago she reviewed a nursing bra on Amazon. Gave it five stars. Fast forward to now and she when pulls up her review history that same review (with the exact text!) now appears on a consumer electronics device.
  • milesvp 6y ago
    Yup, it's a very common way to get a product with high sales and ratings. You put up a low cost, high volume, high quality item. Sell it cheap, then after you have enough 5 star reviews, swap all the pictures and text with a new higher margin (maybe lower quality item), completely unrelated item.
• umvi 6y ago
  I use niche (<2M subs) YouTube channels like ProjectFarm[0] to decide between products these days. Huge YouTube channels are no longer trustworthy as I've noticed they will shill for whatever "opportunity" comes knocking (MatPat recently did an interview with Dr. Fauci[1] on his The Game Theorists channel, and while I didn't disagree with the content of the video, it raised some red flags in my mind because it was obviously content that didn't fit into the channel...) [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIkZRmqgjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLIkZRmqgjI
  • jxramos 6y ago
    +1 for project farm, I've found his recommendations and putting things to the test to be very accurate. Been pleased with the buys I made off his recommendations. Will Prowse is a real gem too https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoj6RxIAQq8kmJme-5dnN0Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoj6RxIAQq8kmJme-5dnN0Q
• dhdhhdd 6y ago
  Maybe there should be a "return rate"% per product? :-)
  • kardos 6y ago
    That would give competitors an incentive to buy&return said product to drive up the return rate
• mistyvales 6y ago
  I stopped caring about user "reviews" years ago. A good chunk of them are paid and another good chunk are absurdly emotional/hyperbolic, most of which the buyers don't even know what the use case of a product is. Most people, especially on Amazon, buy a product without even looking at every detail about it. I partially blame Amazon's product UI which is generally terrible, but also people that don't do any research on a product they buy.
• geocrasher 6y ago
  I don't understand the need to mistrust online reviews. They are all 100% accurate and only published by people who are completely authoritative in their segment. I find online reviews to be objective and informed, while providing deep insight into the inner workings of that which is being reviewed. They always express an unbiased approach, and in my expert opinion, everyone should trust online reviews. A++++++ would do business again. You can trust me on this! Yours Truly, Prince Alyusi Islassis Nigerian National Petroleum Company
• roboman 6y ago
  I use the FakeSpot extension for the Brave browser. Works with any Chrome based browser. Uses AI to analyze reviews as well as the reviewers other reviews. Then it gives a letter grade from A to F that rates the trustworthiness of the reviews. Maybe not perfect but very cool!
• sgt101 6y ago
  I just hope that the 44% didn't trust them 5 years ago either!
• abecedarius 6y ago
  Somehow this problem will be solved -- not perfectly, but like how spam went from a serious problem to an annoyance. The question is, how? What's the solution going to look like? You'd think Amazon would've focused more on it by now.
• ajdude 6y ago
  I recently canceled my Amazon prime subscription after having it for almost a decade. The final straw was Amazon removing the ability to comment on reviews. First, they remove the ability to see the comments using the mobile site, then they remove them all together saying that not as many people were utilizing it. Unfortunately, those comments were a good litmus test to the authenticity of a review - positive or negative - and gave insight to the responsiveness of the seller. Some comments on reviews even had instructions on how to solve the reviewer's problem from experts in the field, it’s all lost now.
  • choward 6y ago
    I agree completely. Now the only way to "reply" to a review is to leave another review which adds something that shouldn't be a review to the reviews making reviews even more worthless.
• jdlyga 6y ago
  An absolute ton of Amazon sellers give you gift cards for positive reviews.
• ericol 6y ago
  For me, the biggest issue I have is book ratings on Amazon. Besides companies - and small time authors - paying for good ratings, you have a similar amount of people that genuinely bought the book, giving 1 start ratings because of whatever quality of the book manufacture, be it physical or digital. One of these two alone would not be difficult to manage, but having to deal the two makes it almost unbearable to find out the proper rating. We should start giving ratings ratings.
• cronix 6y ago
  I wonder what the % would be if they asked a more general question about just "information they read online." I'd bet it's in the same ballpark. How many major news stories did you read in the last several years that made large sensational claims, which later turned out to be completely false?
• makecheck 6y ago
  I mean, when articles point out clear scams with thousands of 5-star reviews, how can a lowly honest person compete? Similarly, what can you possibly do if someone with deep pockets decides to trash your competing product’s reviews? Also, in my experience at least, the overwhelming majority of real customers do not submit reviews at all. Thus I am skeptical of any product that has miraculously convinced thousands of people to contribute positive feedback. At this point, every single review system acts more like a tool to help scam people, instead of helping them to avoid bad products. It pushes bad products to the top of search, whereas unrated products would be forced to scam a handful of people in obscurity. And the worst part is that I still think twice about any low review, even knowing that in all likelihood the reviews I am reading may not even be real! It really messes with your head.
• vpmpaul 6y ago
  In other news 60% of people don't pay attention to anything other than what is parroted to them by other "people"
• argiope 6y ago
  In Germany there's Stiftung Warentest [1] which offers reviews without the apparent conflict of interest. They release paid articles with review and comparison all kinds of items. I find their offering a breeze of fresh air compared to the dumpster fire that online reviews have become. [1] https://www.test.de/unternehmen/ https://www.test.de/unternehmen/ (German)
  • Tenoke 6y ago
    Can't you literally request for any negative review to be removed in Germany as it 'hurts your business' by law? I live here and that's the explanation I've been given when negative reviews disappear .
    • argiope 6y ago
      As far as I know, businesses have no right in Germany to remove lawful reviews, even if they are negative [1] and I can confirm to see occasional bad reviews on their articles. In any case I'm rather interested in finding trustful positive reviews to guide my purchases and I value having a neutral agency that offers that. [1] https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/negative-bewertungen-im-internet-loeschen-lassen-geht-das_168491.html https://www.anwalt.de/rechtstipps/negative-bewertungen-im-in... (German)
  • insickness 6y ago
    Who pays for the articles and who writes them? Is this like Consumer Reports?
    • argiope 6y ago
      This is the description found on their "About Us" in English [1]: Stiftung Warentest is a foundation. It was established in 1964 by the German federal parliament with the aim of helping consumers by providing impartial and objective information based on the results of comparative investigations of goods and services. We buy products – anonymously from retailers, and make covert use of services. We carry out tests – in independent labs that use scientific methods and follow our specifications. We give verdicts – ranging from „very good“ to „unsatisfactory“, based solely on objective results. We publish our findings – totally free of adverts in our magazines „test“ and „Finanztest“, and online at www.test.de. According to their report [2] they are mostly financed through the sale of their articles. [1] https://www.test.de/unternehmen/about-us-5017053-0/ https://www.test.de/unternehmen/about-us-5017053-0/ [2] https://www.test.de/unternehmen/zahlen-5017275-0/ https://www.test.de/unternehmen/zahlen-5017275-0/
• spectramax 6y ago
  Checkout Tabelog, a Japanese version of Yelp. Anything over 3.5 is phenomenal. 4.0+? Rare. 4.5 is probably the best sushi place in all of Tokyo. Anything over 2.0 is great. 1.5 is manageable and 1 or below is bad. We in the west just love so much excess. Everything is amazing or everything just sucks. Bimodal distribution and extreme greed. Most things in nature, society, etc are normally distributed and our review system and the people are broken from the most fundamental ways. Something to learn about this from Japan.
  • fomine3 6y ago
    tabelog's score is not average but very artificial by secret algorithm.
• andrewclunn 6y ago
  Is this an appropriate thread to trash talk the garbage up / down vote system that is hacker news karma?
• SeanFerree 6y ago
  I'm the same. I've slowly looked at reviews as something that can be manipulated, so it's hard to trust
• bsd44 6y ago
  Nowadays I look for reviews on Reddit. If I can't find any that I consider to be legitimate, I won't buy the product if it's more than £10.
  • TRcontrarian 6y ago
    I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before that becomes an astroturfing target as well. At least there's account history associated with it, so there is some effort associated with creating or purchasing accounts with believable histories. Long term I think facebook wins this space because they have the most in depth real digital identities tied to people.
• boatsie 6y ago
  The internet is making everything winner take all. Off the first page of Google? You don’t exist. Not on first page of Amazon for “Bluetooth headphones”? You don’t exist. That’s why companies will pay so much to game whatever system gets them to the top rank, which is only further reinforced when people buy/click that top product/result. This is a hard problem to solve but I think there needs to be a way of segmenting the results you see, perhaps more highly weighting the opinions of others similar (in preferences) to you.
• djoldman 6y ago
  Amazon/walmart/google throwaway account people: whats the holdup on fixing fake/fraudulent/spam reviews? Is it a tech problem or do people not care to fix it (perceived small benefit to cost)? If it's a tech problem, I'd be curious to know the details. Is it more interesting than "too big of a firehose"?
  • yblu 6y ago
    Dealing with fake/fraudulent reviews is hard enough, this is probably harder: manufacturers incentivizes real customers to write good reviews & remove bad reviews. I recently bought a few highly-rated gadgets from Amazon. One of them came with a leaflet saying they would send $50 gift card (the product costs $200) if I review and send them the screenshot. For another product, after I posted a 3-star review, which was not at all negative, I've been receiving a dozen or so emails from different addresses with varying subjects/contents but all asking me to remove that review in exchange for a gift card. I could only imagine how much harder they would go after the 1-star reviews...
• ggggtez 6y ago
  There was a time when I read Amazon reviews. At best now, I only look at the 1 star reviews to see if there are glaring problems. Any review with 4 or more stars causes "ad blindness" for me. I don't even see them.
• dredmorbius 6y ago
  A few ideas: - Reviews should be normalised to a reviewer's mean score. If a person hands out 5/5s like there's no tomorrow, those rate as 2.5/5s. - The whole notion of collaborative filtering is that some information is (usually) better than none. This is often the case, but in a situation where 100 people are tasked with evaluating a skyscraper, jet airliner, pharmaceutical, or software design, where 1 is a domain expert and 99 are not ... I'd slant my weight in favour of the domain expert, generally. (A jury of experts might be more suitable.) Otherwise, the information is simply noise. - Massive penalties and downratings for both reviewers and retailers who game the system. Zero those motherlovers out. Put some skin in the game. Amazon (and every other review site) has a massive reputation problem here, and it will (and is) biting them.
• jbluepolarbear 6y ago
  I’ve worked in the mobile game space for awhile and nearly all game reviews are fake or paid for in some way. I worked on 3 games last year that are all sitting at 4.5 stars on android and iOS. You know how I know those reviews are fake? Because I programmed the games and know they’re trash.
• afinlayson 6y ago
  Companies like Amazon have no incentives to police gaming of reviews. A purchased item is money to them, regardless of if the purchase was a sponsored purchase. It's why fake products have equal or more reviews than popular products found in stores.