2 ms·

It’s trivial under current systems. But once you start placing higher value on verified identities, those millions of bombers are going to turn out to be a lot

• chongli 3y ago
  It doesn't take millions to boost a specific product's sales. As few as a thousand fake reviews can get the job done. And bombers will find ways to corrupt the verified reviewers, since their reviews will go up in value. And the cost for Amazon to verify the reviewers is really important to take into consideration. If verified reviewers end up being untrustworthy, they've put in that effort (time and money) for nothing! This is really just a special case of the wider issue of fraud. And I'm fairly convinced of the argument that the optimal amount is nonzero [1]. A further wrinkle to this problem is that fraud tends to only get more sophisticated over time, so the costs of fighting it always go up. At some point we may reach a scenario where fraud is so rampant that entire business models become non-viable. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32701913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32701913