5 ms·

It works as sabotage on Amazon listings because Amazon uses reviews with certain keywords as lead indicators for product contamination or other issues. So if yo

It works as sabotage on Amazon listings because Amazon uses reviews with certain keywords as lead indicators for product contamination or other issues. So if you want to sabotage a competitor's vitamin pill the day before Prime Day, you have an entire building full of people leave variations of "taking this made me feel nauseous" or "this gave me a headache" and "weird chemical odor" after purchasing the product. Either the automated systems will flag it or complaints will flag it for review. Software can't actually poison people in a physical sense, so generally the software marketplaces care less about signals from reviews like those.

lowercased 5y ago
Why are those reviews included at all if they weren't "verified purchases"? I guess there's some utility in it - you already own product X and want to let people know about something (positive or negative) but... this blatant sabotage from obvious non-customers/users is crazy.
- mountainb 5y ago
  You would pay your manipulators to leave verified purchases. In the black market for manipulative reviews that comes at a premium. You can also get similar effects with unverified reviews on some product types (consumables, beauty products, etc.) It's not non obvious if you bribe someone who uses an American shipping address to do it.
fortran77 5y ago
Now I know why I see the phrase “weird chemical odor” on reviews for things like facemasks masks a lot.
- mountainb 5y ago
  They're hoping that it gives it a hazmat or pesticide false flag. Pesticide false flags are extremely common even for things for which it would make no sense whatsoever. Anything that says 'filter' for example will often result in a pesticide false flag.
tinus_hn 5y ago
How about ‘This software broke my phone’ ‘This software wasted my battery’ ‘This software invaded my privacy’ ‘This software is a scam’
- mountainb 5y ago
  I haven't worked on anything related to app stores in years so I'm not sure, but that's promising, as would "this posted without my permission," "this bricked my phone," "my phone ran so hot it burned my pocket," etc.

lowercased 5y ago

Why are those reviews included at all if they weren't "verified purchases"? I guess there's some utility in it - you already own product X and want to let people know about something (positive or negative) but... this blatant sabotage from obvious non-customers/users is crazy.

mountainb 5y ago
You would pay your manipulators to leave verified purchases. In the black market for manipulative reviews that comes at a premium. You can also get similar effects with unverified reviews on some product types (consumables, beauty products, etc.) It's not non obvious if you bribe someone who uses an American shipping address to do it.

fortran77 5y ago

Now I know why I see the phrase “weird chemical odor” on reviews for things like facemasks masks a lot.

mountainb 5y ago
They're hoping that it gives it a hazmat or pesticide false flag. Pesticide false flags are extremely common even for things for which it would make no sense whatsoever. Anything that says 'filter' for example will often result in a pesticide false flag.

tinus_hn 5y ago

How about ‘This software broke my phone’ ‘This software wasted my battery’ ‘This software invaded my privacy’ ‘This software is a scam’

mountainb 5y ago
I haven't worked on anything related to app stores in years so I'm not sure, but that's promising, as would "this posted without my permission," "this bricked my phone," "my phone ran so hot it burned my pocket," etc.