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Yet Sven Taylor recommended ExpressVPN for years despite the fact that its ownership was quite suspect (secret). We've never fully known who was behind it and f

by ucha 5y ago

Yet Sven Taylor recommended ExpressVPN for years despite the fact that its ownership was quite suspect (secret). We've never fully known who was behind it and from where it was truly operated. The ranking of best VPNs on the site is mostly a ranking of VPNs that offer the largest referral fees [1]. One of the largest, most honest and transparent VPN, Mullvad, does not have an affiliate program. And guess what, it's not even reviewed on Restore Privacy! [1] https://onemorecupof-coffee.com/best-vpn-affiliate-programs/ https://onemorecupof-coffee.com/best-vpn-affiliate-programs/

ouEight12 5y ago
> The ranking of best VPNs on the site is mostly a ranking of VPNs that offer the largest referral fees [1]. Can't we replace "VPNs" with pretty much any service at this point though? I haven't trusted 'review/ranking' sites in ages, because after see the same top 5 "best hosting providers ever!" lists one 3 sites, you kind of get a hint.
- ohashi 5y ago
  As someone who has been working on an honest web hosting review site for a decade now. You're totally right. I see the same pattern in this article talking about fake review sites. The biggest offender in hosting was Endurance International Group who owned so many major brands and gobbled them up. You'd often find any ranking full of the brands they owned (BlueHost, HostGator, iPage, JustHost, Site5, Arvixe, etc, etc, etc). Since you're really skeptical, I'd love to hear your take on what I've done (and been doing) in terms of trying to create an honest system. The gist is, I scrape Twitter data, filter out spam, affiliate links, etc, and use sentiment analysis to see which brands people actually like. My hypothesis was that reviews are fundamentally a weird human behavior. The real 'reviews' are embedded in normal conversation when you talk to people. With enough data of these signals, you can get a much better picture of what people really think. The results seem to line up basically like an NPS measurement. https://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare https://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare has all my data if you want to see how the rankings actually look. Not every company has an affiliate program. Many smaller companies aren't listed because I can't get enough data.
  - Matthias1 5y ago
    If I’m reading your table correctly, you say Linode’s VPS plans start at $10/mo, but they’re actually $5/mo. Is this meta-data, the stuff outside the rankings, hand-entered?
    - ohashi 5y ago
      Yes and updated it, thanks!
  - ucha 5y ago
    I don't know how accurate your ranking method is - NLP is tricky - but the idea is very very cool!
    - ohashi 5y ago
      Yeah, I custom wrote a lot of the NLP years ago. It was adapted from my Master's thesis predicting box office sales using sentiment analysis on twitter data (and a few other variables like number of theaters it plays in). Back then, nothing out of the box was accurate enough to my liking and I had to custom write a lot of stuff to analyze it and it's pretty web hosting specific for understanding context. I honestly haven't tested much on newest sentiment analysis stuff available. I wonder how accurate it would be. But the biggest problem I am finding is that there is less data on Twitter. Not sure if that's fewer people talking about these companies or just lower Twitter volume in general.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Paid reviews seem easy enough to spot, they hype up the product/service too much, I'd read a VPN review, notice those canned phrases, and sigh because in my view the review site just scammed me of my time... Maybe a bot that collects reviews and detect similar sentences can also rate those bullshit "review sites"..
    - ohashi 5y ago
      For hosting, it's pretty clear based on who they put at the top and top few rankings. Is it one of the cheap, high affiliate hosts? Fake. Problem is, people unfamiliar with the space might not be aware of it. For people who know, web hosting reviews are generally crap. As far as rating sentences of bullshit review sites. How do you think that would work and how would you train such a system? I'm worried about the non-paid training, where might one get enough sample data to show 'normal' vs 'paid'?
fuddle 5y ago
Yes Mullvad is one of the best options!
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  What are other best/better options? (Due to my use-case and currency I find Mullvad pricey and would be interested in alternatives hence the question)
cliftonk 5y ago
Mullvad is wireguard based with extremely easy to use apps. Highly recommended.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Not just wg they offer openvpn too.
truetraveller 5y ago
Mullvad it is! I'm potentially a new customer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
temp8964 5y ago
I can't access Mullvad website: Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to mullvad.net. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  I see that error sometimes when a content filter blocks a website. Do you have an internet filter that also blocks vpn sites so you "can't" get around it?
  - temp8964 5y ago
    I tried to visit the site again and this time I got a "Parental Control Restrictions" page from my router (filter managed by TrendMicro?). This is strange, because I have never seen this before, not even for p*rn websites...
acd10j 5y ago
How do we know someone not paying you for recommending Mullvad here or you do not have conflict of interest in recommending Mullvad, I have seen people recommending ExpressVPN everywhere even on HN before this whole fiasco. Problem with paid reviews is that it is very difficult to ascertain and detect them for ordinary consumer. Don’t know the solution but now i am skeptical of comments like you have posted.
- ucha 5y ago
  You're absolutely right! I could be paid to recommend Mullvad and my praise of it should be taken with a grain of salt! The point I was trying to make is that it is not a small provider, it is well rated by reputable privacy reviewers such as privacytools.io - who do not use affiliate link or take payment from providers - so there is no reason it should be ignored by Sven Taylor. I'm less trying to praise this particular VPN than to show that that review website is somewhat "provably" an affiliate link farm.

by ucha 5y ago

ouEight12 5y ago

> The ranking of best VPNs on the site is mostly a ranking of VPNs that offer the largest referral fees [1]. Can't we replace "VPNs" with pretty much any service at this point though? I haven't trusted 'review/ranking' sites in ages, because after see the same top 5 "best hosting providers ever!" lists one 3 sites, you kind of get a hint.

ohashi 5y ago
As someone who has been working on an honest web hosting review site for a decade now. You're totally right. I see the same pattern in this article talking about fake review sites. The biggest offender in hosting was Endurance International Group who owned so many major brands and gobbled them up. You'd often find any ranking full of the brands they owned (BlueHost, HostGator, iPage, JustHost, Site5, Arvixe, etc, etc, etc). Since you're really skeptical, I'd love to hear your take on what I've done (and been doing) in terms of trying to create an honest system. The gist is, I scrape Twitter data, filter out spam, affiliate links, etc, and use sentiment analysis to see which brands people actually like. My hypothesis was that reviews are fundamentally a weird human behavior. The real 'reviews' are embedded in normal conversation when you talk to people. With enough data of these signals, you can get a much better picture of what people really think. The results seem to line up basically like an NPS measurement. https://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare https://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare has all my data if you want to see how the rankings actually look. Not every company has an affiliate program. Many smaller companies aren't listed because I can't get enough data.
- Matthias1 5y ago
  If I’m reading your table correctly, you say Linode’s VPS plans start at $10/mo, but they’re actually $5/mo. Is this meta-data, the stuff outside the rankings, hand-entered?
  - ohashi 5y ago
    Yes and updated it, thanks!
- ucha 5y ago
  I don't know how accurate your ranking method is - NLP is tricky - but the idea is very very cool!
  - ohashi 5y ago
    Yeah, I custom wrote a lot of the NLP years ago. It was adapted from my Master's thesis predicting box office sales using sentiment analysis on twitter data (and a few other variables like number of theaters it plays in). Back then, nothing out of the box was accurate enough to my liking and I had to custom write a lot of stuff to analyze it and it's pretty web hosting specific for understanding context. I honestly haven't tested much on newest sentiment analysis stuff available. I wonder how accurate it would be. But the biggest problem I am finding is that there is less data on Twitter. Not sure if that's fewer people talking about these companies or just lower Twitter volume in general.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Paid reviews seem easy enough to spot, they hype up the product/service too much, I'd read a VPN review, notice those canned phrases, and sigh because in my view the review site just scammed me of my time... Maybe a bot that collects reviews and detect similar sentences can also rate those bullshit "review sites"..
  - ohashi 5y ago
    For hosting, it's pretty clear based on who they put at the top and top few rankings. Is it one of the cheap, high affiliate hosts? Fake. Problem is, people unfamiliar with the space might not be aware of it. For people who know, web hosting reviews are generally crap. As far as rating sentences of bullshit review sites. How do you think that would work and how would you train such a system? I'm worried about the non-paid training, where might one get enough sample data to show 'normal' vs 'paid'?

fuddle 5y ago

Yes Mullvad is one of the best options!

crossroadsguy 5y ago
What are other best/better options? (Due to my use-case and currency I find Mullvad pricey and would be interested in alternatives hence the question)

cliftonk 5y ago

Mullvad is wireguard based with extremely easy to use apps. Highly recommended.

ekianjo 5y ago
Not just wg they offer openvpn too.

truetraveller 5y ago

Mullvad it is! I'm potentially a new customer.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

temp8964 5y ago

I can't access Mullvad website: Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to mullvad.net. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
I see that error sometimes when a content filter blocks a website. Do you have an internet filter that also blocks vpn sites so you "can't" get around it?
- temp8964 5y ago
  I tried to visit the site again and this time I got a "Parental Control Restrictions" page from my router (filter managed by TrendMicro?). This is strange, because I have never seen this before, not even for p*rn websites...

acd10j 5y ago

How do we know someone not paying you for recommending Mullvad here or you do not have conflict of interest in recommending Mullvad, I have seen people recommending ExpressVPN everywhere even on HN before this whole fiasco. Problem with paid reviews is that it is very difficult to ascertain and detect them for ordinary consumer. Don’t know the solution but now i am skeptical of comments like you have posted.

ucha 5y ago
You're absolutely right! I could be paid to recommend Mullvad and my praise of it should be taken with a grain of salt! The point I was trying to make is that it is not a small provider, it is well rated by reputable privacy reviewers such as privacytools.io - who do not use affiliate link or take payment from providers - so there is no reason it should be ignored by Sven Taylor. I'm less trying to praise this particular VPN than to show that that review website is somewhat "provably" an affiliate link farm.