Amazon is under no obligation to delete negative reviews that are "disputed," and I for one have written reviews of horrible products that I would never change

Amazon is under no obligation to delete negative reviews that are "disputed," and I for one have written reviews of horrible products that I would never change nor delete, even for money. There is a weird defeatist mentality in this thread of "why try anything because sellers are just going to game it," but that's the wrong way to think when you're designing a human system. It's like writing a Constitution, insofar as you have to predict and hedge against the gamesmanship beforehand. If the review mills are in China or other non-Anglophone places, then removing stars and forcing them to be substantive makes it much harder because they would literally have to actually review the product. A reader can't differentiate between five fake stars and five real stars, but would probably be able to differentiate between an empty positive review and a well-presented negative review.