The lawsuit targets account holders on Fiverr.com, a marketplace for odd-jobs where "gigs" are sold for $5 and up....I'd never heard of Fiverr.com before, so this seems to be effective publicity for them. It's also an effective way for Amazon to scare people away from spamming its site. As for finding the the 1,000+ people who've raked in the five-dollar bills for easy easy work and getting money out of them, we'll see. Maybe some people are getting rich doing this sort of thing (and other Fiverr-facilitated schemes).
"Most of the defendants offer positive or 5-star reviews for Amazon sellers' products. Indeed, many encourage the Amazon seller to create the text for their own reviews," the complaint reads.
Amazon's terms of use ban fake reviews, and it's suing for breach of contract and violating Washington's consumer protection laws.
October 19, 2015
Amazon sues 1,000+ users of its site for posting fake reviews.
This isn't Amazon suing people who, for whatever reason, put up reviews of products they haven't bought or who say things they don't really believe.
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22 comments:
What about the raving reviews of the $5000 gallon of milk.
rhhardin said...
What about the raving reviews of the $5000 gallon of milk.
Have you tried it? It's really good milk.
I've done joke reviews in the past. One appeared in Cracked before the site turned into SJW Daily.
No one is getting rich via fiverr.com. In fact, that's precisely the opposite of what's happening and the opposite of why the site was created.
http://www.jesscreatives.com/blog/why-you-should-stop-using-fiverr
I post all my fake reviews through the Althouse Amazon Portal.
I hope that's not a problem.
I am Laslo.
Lying as a way to make a quick buck. In America?
JT, that article links to a post that makes a better point: That "graphic designers" on Fiverr are stealing other people's designs and passing it off as their own:
https://medium.com/swlh/in-the-past-couple-years-startups-have-started-realizing-that-good-design-can-make-the-difference-2fdeb90d390a
It's one thing to pay less and get something that's good enough; it's another to pay less and get a stolen design that a lot of other people are probably using.
"The challenge of merchants soliciting illegitimate reviews is one that faces all marketplaces and online platforms," Fiverr said in a statement.
True. I've purchased products on Amazon* and had the manufacturers solicit positive reviews before the product had even been shipped, much less evaluated by me.
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* Via the Althouse portal, of course.
Five bucks a review? No reason you couldn't do between four and six reviews an hour with the TV on in the background. I would have thought that pretty good money when I was in college - a lot better than the hourly rate I got for wearing baggy green clothing and freezing my ass off.
Amazon has been plagued by fake reviews for years on books with a political theme. Look at Sarah Palin's book for an example. Eventually, they get around to deleting many but it must affect sales and I'm sure that is the intent.
Usually the best reviews on Amazon are the negative ones, assuming the reviewer is both snarky and informed. Giggling ignorance is only funny after a sufficient number of beers. I have yet to find that beer limit. It may only be theoretical.
Michael K,
History too. I recently bought a book where I didn't even make it out of the prologue before doing factual spit takes on nearly every page. For example, in one sentence, the author managed to cite the wrong battle, wrong victor for the battle he did cite, and the wrong date for both battles.
Sure enough, when I went on-line, the first Amazon review was a lengthy 5-star praising the author's scholarship.
People treat $5 as not sufficient motivation - are you kidding? That's an hour take home pay for a minimum wage gig. And as others have mentioned, in college you can do 5 reviews and have a week's worth of pizza and beer money (albeit really cheap pizza and crap beer, but that'scollege for you).
I appreciate that Amazon added the "verified purchase" button - it's a nice step to add alot of validity to a review.
Perhaps Amazon should ban any company that has a lot of high reviews from those fiverr reviewers. The quickest way to get companies to stop hiring fake reviewers is to hit them in the bottom line. They might also want to check to see if they can trace fake low reviews for competitive products to a company.
Finally someone has presented a viable way for an ordinary person like myself to actually make money on the internet, and one of the biggest Internet giants doesn't want to share even 5 dollars of it with the little people.
You figure the trolls around here get $5 a post from the DNC?
"You figure the trolls around here get $5 a post from the DNC? "
If garage doesn't have to pay the DNC for his posts, they're getting taken.
I think the rate that the communist Chinese use is 50 cents for every post that derails an uncomfortable thread for the powerful, garage is more of a fifty center.
I wrote a snarky review once for a book I actually did buy. The author's father contacted me, and then the author. I removed the review because she seemed quite reasonable and it meant more to her than it did to me. I was happy that the author actually responded to my criticism.
On the other hand, Patton Oswald did this full on bash all Americans, left wing "comedy" routine on Amazon that was basically nasty and insulting and I tried to down rate it, since it was not funny, and I was unable to rate it, even though it had a four star "user rating." Apparently those ratings are gamed too, but by Amazon.
I'd heard of fiverr but in a legit context of ppl who would do whatever for five dollars- put up a quick web page for example. Never used it.
Most 5 star reviews are worthless - fake or not. I usually read the 3 star reviews to get a feel for why a book or film is worth buying.
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