9 ms·

There's a whole fraud economy that has emerged in the last decade or so. Its existence has done deep harm to social trust, in my opinion. It extends far beyond

There's a whole fraud economy that has emerged in the last decade or so. Its existence has done deep harm to social trust, in my opinion. It extends far beyond just fake reviews of course; it reaches deep into the corrupt business practices and politicians/governments around the world.

ekianjo 5y ago
How do you know reviews were more reliable before ? In pretty much all industries people were hacking reviews before especially when channels were more limited. Nobody invented fraud yesterday.
- simonh 5y ago
  Youre right that I can't be sure at a macro level, but I personally found Amazon reviews more useful and accurate relative to the things I actually bought a decade ago than I do now.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  before, people got reviews from friends and personal connections, not a sidebar on google maps.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    People still get that. They just also get reviews from others online. Forums have been invaluable to me for finding out information about niche fields where I do not have a person familiar with that in my social circles.
- Vaderv 5y ago
  How? Simple, you just have to look at scale and technology.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Reviews were more "expert"-based 20 years or so again in magazines that had some editorial oversight and processes for selecting and reviewing products. Of course, there were far fewer reviews available, companies still gamed reviewers/magazines but in different ways, and there was sometimes outright fraud around benchmarks, etc.
  - lazide 5y ago
    A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.
    - tw04 5y ago
      Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?
      - plorkyeran 5y ago
        CR was notable and trusted specifically because they were the only ones in the industry who did that.
      - pyuser583 5y ago
        Was? The 10 bucks/month I pay for consumer reports is the best money I spend on a subscription! They’re still quite strong.
      - techrat 5y ago
        Consumer Reports buys the products they review. They can't be blacklisted if they're not relying on the manufacturer to send them a free demo/item. (Youtube/Blog) Reviewers get blacklisted by companies by not providing a positive review about a product they were given. As they rely on scooping type style reviews, this means they not only don't get a free product to review, but they can't review it until after it's for sale instead of being able to 'preview' it for people and get more clicks that way.
- zipiridu 5y ago
  The "fraud economy" was democratized in the last decade but it has always existed. Previously you needed to be rich, powerful, and well connected to have media companies cover your business/product. Now you can buy fake engagement, reviews, upvotes, etc with a few click so everyone does it. If you don't do it you will be outcompeted by the ones who do. I've experienced this myself. I tried buying ads and writing organic posts but got little traffic on a site I wanted to promote. Then I decided to spend a few hundred dollars on fake upvotes and my ROI was easily 20x better than on ads. I had to be a bit more careful so it wasn't too obvious but I learned that these dark patterns work. I've heard of similar tactics used by unicorn startups in their early stages at much larger scale. The reviews weren't trustworthy before either, it's just more obvious now.
  - nprateem 5y ago
    A friend was wondering where you learnt about this stuff?
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    What I find funny is when some multibillion company buys tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, but each post gets like 1 like or 1 comment. Like, hello!!!!! But maybe it's because of FTC rules: fake followers are legally okay, but fake likes and fake comments could be considered a fake review and therefore FTC violation.
    - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
      Another giveaway is accounts posting multi-sentence comments or reviews within seconds of their previous submissions. How can this get past bot checks is beyond me
      - kabes 5y ago
        For the same reason that on facebook I still get daily friend requests from very sexy women with a brand new profile, 4 friends total, none in common, in a random location in the world with 1 post linking to some dating site. It's because they just don't care. Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent.
- mkhpalm 5y ago
  One example I can remember from 10+ years ago was newegg. I don't recall ever really feeling like I got "duped" based on the many online reviews there. I think that sentiment was pretty well revered and not just my personal opinions of it. Everything was pretty well spot on from my experiences. That said, I have no idea how that would fair these days. I'll even go so far as to say back when Amazon was getting started their reviews were a lot more reliable as well.
  - tw04 5y ago
    I think you mean duped?
    - mkhpalm 5y ago
      Ah yeah... typo I guess
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Ebay seller reviews have been fraudulent for 20 years or more (not ALL reviews, of course). And i think you are talking about the times before NewEgg had 3rd party sellers.
    - smashed 5y ago
      A++++++
    - foota 5y ago
      Honestly, I think 3rd party sellers are half the problem. Eliminating them won't fix everything though, since there are sites where the 1st party itself is dishonest (e.g., yelp), but if you trust the site and it is all 1st party then you're in a good state for reviews, since there's little incentive for anyone to fake them.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Manufacturers or importers/distributors would still have incentive to fake them.
- OneTimePetes 5y ago
  It was based upon a tree of trust. And at least there was a synthetic consensus everyone agreed upon. Everyone was misled by state media, but now people switch from one tree of trust to another, depending on predictive power, which leads into conspiracy trees, because they always predict the worst outcome. A clock that screams doom all day long, will never betray you.
paul7986 5y ago
Don't forget all media especially political and world news media! Zero trust in any of those reality TV outlets. I mean there are tons of resources and sites now to fact check the media (whether that's the media themselves like USA Today's fact checking section to non-profits), which is ridiculous if such resources are needed to constantly check what's true or not. Thus, i've tuned out and not a fan of people who plug themselves into their media machine of choice and live/die by it. They do not think for themselves rather their idiot media machine controls them!
- throwaway6EQUJ5 5y ago
  >They do not think for themselves rather their idiot media machine controls them! Everyone ultimately has to rely on authorities about subjects. From parents to scientist. It's a dilemma, you can't know/research everything your self but you also shouldn't trust blindy everything you get told, so there is no final solution. The only thing you can do is never stop questioning, falsify everything, don't deem anything above it as sacred. This way, you will collect a shifting world view from all sources. If you don't engage with your news channels, if you don't question in a meaningful way, if you discredit whole groups of outlets just by virtue, you have surrendered.
fidesomnes 5y ago
just wait until you see who the Justice Department classifies as white.
joebob42 5y ago
I think it existed before, controlled by larger parties (media etc, professional reviewers and critics). With the rise of the internet, there was a brief period where anyone could share their opinion with you, and sellers hadnt figured it out yet. Now they mostly have and we're back where we were or worse.
victor9000 5y ago
Could you be more specific?
- twofornone 5y ago
  It's an open secret that stores on amazon will send out free goods in return for positive reviews. The people "buy" items by the dozen and then resell them as third parties.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ekianjo 5y ago

How do you know reviews were more reliable before ? In pretty much all industries people were hacking reviews before especially when channels were more limited. Nobody invented fraud yesterday.

simonh 5y ago
Youre right that I can't be sure at a macro level, but I personally found Amazon reviews more useful and accurate relative to the things I actually bought a decade ago than I do now.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
before, people got reviews from friends and personal connections, not a sidebar on google maps.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  People still get that. They just also get reviews from others online. Forums have been invaluable to me for finding out information about niche fields where I do not have a person familiar with that in my social circles.
Vaderv 5y ago
How? Simple, you just have to look at scale and technology.
ghaff 5y ago
Reviews were more "expert"-based 20 years or so again in magazines that had some editorial oversight and processes for selecting and reviewing products. Of course, there were far fewer reviews available, companies still gamed reviewers/magazines but in different ways, and there was sometimes outright fraud around benchmarks, etc.
- lazide 5y ago
  A huge portion of those reviews were payola, plain and simple. If a reviewer didn’t provide at least a somewhat positive review (even for complete dreck), they were often blacklisted.
  - tw04 5y ago
    Blacklisted how? 20 years ago consumer reports was considered a trusted source and they purchased everything they reviewed. How are you going to blacklist someone from going to the store and buying your product?
    - plorkyeran 5y ago
      CR was notable and trusted specifically because they were the only ones in the industry who did that.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      Was? The 10 bucks/month I pay for consumer reports is the best money I spend on a subscription! They’re still quite strong.
    - techrat 5y ago
      Consumer Reports buys the products they review. They can't be blacklisted if they're not relying on the manufacturer to send them a free demo/item. (Youtube/Blog) Reviewers get blacklisted by companies by not providing a positive review about a product they were given. As they rely on scooping type style reviews, this means they not only don't get a free product to review, but they can't review it until after it's for sale instead of being able to 'preview' it for people and get more clicks that way.
zipiridu 5y ago
The "fraud economy" was democratized in the last decade but it has always existed. Previously you needed to be rich, powerful, and well connected to have media companies cover your business/product. Now you can buy fake engagement, reviews, upvotes, etc with a few click so everyone does it. If you don't do it you will be outcompeted by the ones who do. I've experienced this myself. I tried buying ads and writing organic posts but got little traffic on a site I wanted to promote. Then I decided to spend a few hundred dollars on fake upvotes and my ROI was easily 20x better than on ads. I had to be a bit more careful so it wasn't too obvious but I learned that these dark patterns work. I've heard of similar tactics used by unicorn startups in their early stages at much larger scale. The reviews weren't trustworthy before either, it's just more obvious now.
- nprateem 5y ago
  A friend was wondering where you learnt about this stuff?
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  What I find funny is when some multibillion company buys tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, but each post gets like 1 like or 1 comment. Like, hello!!!!! But maybe it's because of FTC rules: fake followers are legally okay, but fake likes and fake comments could be considered a fake review and therefore FTC violation.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    Another giveaway is accounts posting multi-sentence comments or reviews within seconds of their previous submissions. How can this get past bot checks is beyond me
    - kabes 5y ago
      For the same reason that on facebook I still get daily friend requests from very sexy women with a brand new profile, 4 friends total, none in common, in a random location in the world with 1 post linking to some dating site. It's because they just don't care. Well, either that or facebook engineers are completely incompetent.
mkhpalm 5y ago
One example I can remember from 10+ years ago was newegg. I don't recall ever really feeling like I got "duped" based on the many online reviews there. I think that sentiment was pretty well revered and not just my personal opinions of it. Everything was pretty well spot on from my experiences. That said, I have no idea how that would fair these days. I'll even go so far as to say back when Amazon was getting started their reviews were a lot more reliable as well.
- tw04 5y ago
  I think you mean duped?
  - mkhpalm 5y ago
    Ah yeah... typo I guess
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Ebay seller reviews have been fraudulent for 20 years or more (not ALL reviews, of course). And i think you are talking about the times before NewEgg had 3rd party sellers.
  - smashed 5y ago
    A++++++
  - foota 5y ago
    Honestly, I think 3rd party sellers are half the problem. Eliminating them won't fix everything though, since there are sites where the 1st party itself is dishonest (e.g., yelp), but if you trust the site and it is all 1st party then you're in a good state for reviews, since there's little incentive for anyone to fake them.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Manufacturers or importers/distributors would still have incentive to fake them.
OneTimePetes 5y ago
It was based upon a tree of trust. And at least there was a synthetic consensus everyone agreed upon. Everyone was misled by state media, but now people switch from one tree of trust to another, depending on predictive power, which leads into conspiracy trees, because they always predict the worst outcome. A clock that screams doom all day long, will never betray you.

paul7986 5y ago

Don't forget all media especially political and world news media! Zero trust in any of those reality TV outlets. I mean there are tons of resources and sites now to fact check the media (whether that's the media themselves like USA Today's fact checking section to non-profits), which is ridiculous if such resources are needed to constantly check what's true or not. Thus, i've tuned out and not a fan of people who plug themselves into their media machine of choice and live/die by it. They do not think for themselves rather their idiot media machine controls them!

throwaway6EQUJ5 5y ago
>They do not think for themselves rather their idiot media machine controls them! Everyone ultimately has to rely on authorities about subjects. From parents to scientist. It's a dilemma, you can't know/research everything your self but you also shouldn't trust blindy everything you get told, so there is no final solution. The only thing you can do is never stop questioning, falsify everything, don't deem anything above it as sacred. This way, you will collect a shifting world view from all sources. If you don't engage with your news channels, if you don't question in a meaningful way, if you discredit whole groups of outlets just by virtue, you have surrendered.

fidesomnes 5y ago

just wait until you see who the Justice Department classifies as white.

joebob42 5y ago

I think it existed before, controlled by larger parties (media etc, professional reviewers and critics). With the rise of the internet, there was a brief period where anyone could share their opinion with you, and sellers hadnt figured it out yet. Now they mostly have and we're back where we were or worse.

victor9000 5y ago

Could you be more specific?

twofornone 5y ago
It's an open secret that stores on amazon will send out free goods in return for positive reviews. The people "buy" items by the dozen and then resell them as third parties.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]