BBC.
ADDED: A screen grab from "Copper Meditation Pyramid for Self Healing and Heart Chakra Activation" (Amazon):
(And that's not an Amazon Associates link. I am not recommending the product. I haven't tried it, and I wouldn't try it.)
April 17, 2019
"Why I write fake online reviews."
"'I've learned never to rely on reviews for anything,' says Iain Taylor, from East Sussex. In his spare time and to supplement his income, the 44-year-old writes fake online reviews in exchange for money and free products. 'I have written reviews from numbing creams to eBooks to downloadable independent films,' he says. 'I think it's bad - but I think everyone's doing it,' says Mr Taylor, describing himself as 'cynical.' 'Since I started doing it I tell my family and friends not to trust reviews. If you are going to buy something you should do more research than look at a couple of five-star reviews on Amazon.' He says writers are paid to buy the product and then leave a review, meaning the review can be verified."
BBC.
ADDED: A screen grab from "Copper Meditation Pyramid for Self Healing and Heart Chakra Activation" (Amazon):
(And that's not an Amazon Associates link. I am not recommending the product. I haven't tried it, and I wouldn't try it.)
BBC.
ADDED: A screen grab from "Copper Meditation Pyramid for Self Healing and Heart Chakra Activation" (Amazon):
(And that's not an Amazon Associates link. I am not recommending the product. I haven't tried it, and I wouldn't try it.)
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47 comments:
Great article. Hits all the important points. Well worth reading.
I see what you did there.
My comments are the Real McCoy.
rhhardin, perfect comment.
I use review stats to narrow my search, then look at individual reviews to see the ones that offer the most insight as apart from opinion.
More pernicious, and perhaps tortious, than fake positive reviews would be fake negative reviews. I didn’t see any of that admitted to or asked about at the BBC article.
Take the time to read Infinite Monkeys comment about rhhardin’s comment. You won’t be disappointed!
Not just 'fake reviews' on real sites, there are entire fake web sites devoted to pushing hack reviews. If you ever just did a web search before buying a TV of fridge you probably read one.
That's why we'll be subscribing to Consumer Reports when we buy our next car.* I just got tired of trying to find a honest source. (Unless you find a legitimate site with a good reputation that does reviews, like Popular Mechanics, perhaps. I assume they're still legit.)
*Not a paid endorsement. As far as you know.
I bought my left-handed skyhook based on a review. Been very happy with my decision.
"I think it's bad - but I think everyone's doing it."
Then everyone is "bad." Son of a bitch!
Are the fake ones that hard to identify? The professional reviews are either too detailed or inappropriately vague. Quantity of reviews is a clue- 1,000 4-5 stars is hard to fake. I just bought some cheap cordless ear buds for 1/10 the cost of Airpods. 4.5 stars, 1,195 reviews. (Not a paid endorsement)
I read the one-star reviews.
You can kinda tell when you're reading a fake one. Right?
OT: why are so many wealthy leftists such cheap uncharitable hypocrites?
I think it would be interesting to write a really negative review that made people want to buy the product even more.
10am and rhhardin has already won the interwebs.
Calling the golf shop, maybe there's still time to find a foursome I can fill out so my day isn't wasted.
That's why I like to see a large number of reviews. First, I want most of them to be positive, then I look at the negative reviews to see what they're complaining about. Finally, I will scan the positive reviews to see what they have to say about the issues brought up in the negative reviews.
Individual reviews don't carry much weight.
I, too, look at the quantity of reviews and then read a few three star ones.
It's the mid-star reviews I find suspect. Seems unlikely the average consumer is going to be motivated enough to create an account, password 16 characters and a hieroglyph, only to log in and say "meh, i was moderately satisfied with product. Maybe you should buy it, but if not then no biggie"
This just in: On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
I cringe when they say, " It is a great product well worth the price."
'I think it's bad - but I think everyone's doing it,'
Tagline for the 21st century.
Question: Why I write fake online reviews.
Answer: Because I'm a piece of shit.
I am cynical too. I just don't get paid to defraud the public for it.
What a dreadful life he must live to do work that agrees is bad. He has sold his soul for his 30 pieces of silver. That does not always end well.
As for reviews, I rarely read a 5 star review and focus mostly on the negative reviews to see why someone did NOT like a product. I expect there are always whingers who complain that the colors of the rainbow hurt their eyes so I look at whether their complaint is relevant to the core purpose of the product. If there are few complaints regarding the core functionality or purpose of the item, then I feel more confident that I will be getting something to meet my needs. That is how I try to defeat the bad man who writes reviews for money. Caveat emptor.
I have to admit, I’ve written a few myself, but never to mislead. Rather, there was always some comedic purpose. When it comes to honestly reviewing things online, I tend to stay out of it. The same way I never click like nor dislike on Youtube videos.
As far as people getting paid to write reviews, I can definitely see this becoming a booming industry in the future.
A lot of local businesses have zero "yelp" and "google" reviews and I would have expected friends or enemies of the owners, etc, to have written something.
Read a few postive reviews to get a sense of the product. Read the negative ones, see of the faults are product design and function. This is like asking a person you know a church what body shop is good. Takes a handfull of responses to weed out facts.
But you have to read reviews. Try these.
https://www.amazon.com/Hutzler-3571-571-Banana-Slicer/dp/B0047E0EII/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Good site for detecting fake reviews:
https://reviewmeta.com/
And the blog is a great read.
The last couple of days I’ve been reading up on reviews. I wrote a white paper a couple years ago on reviews.
Fake negative reviews are also written by competitors.
Hidden Fb groups are out there where you can buy/sell reviews.
One estimate is 40% of reviews are fake in some categories.
Basically amazon allowed Chinese sellers to sell directly, so amazon could compete with alibaba.
And the sellers use fake reviews to rank high on amazon to drive sales.
Washington post and buzzfeed both had articles on this.
Rotten Tomatoes has industrialized this guy's idea.
I will usually scroll down to see if anyone has posted a picture of the item. I pay attention to those reviews.
My favorite fake reviews on Amazon are the ones written in broken English for Chinese companies selling knock-offs. I've never actually read the phrase, "foreign devils", but the self-parodic syntax certainly suggests that kind of pre-woke stereotype of our friends to the East.
As an author, I get email offers to sell me reviews for my books.
I say no. I'd rather have fewer, honest, reviews.
The problem is buyers look at review count. A product having more reviews is more likely to be purchased. It's far too easy to spam fake reviews solely to increase their number. It is not hard to do this- people offer to sell me dozens of guaranteed reviews.
Like everyone else, I find detailed bad reviews far more helpful than the five stars.
A good way to check the validity of a review is to look at other reviews done by that reviewer. It makes it easier to spot a hack or a malcontent.
I guess I don't look at the right products. The online reviews I've seen have been very helpful as to size runs large, runs small, runs true, or poor quality, falls apart etc.
But that's Amazon stuff for the most part.
Good article refereed by zerohedge:
https://thehustle.co/amazon-fake-reviews
Amazon banned receiving free products for reviews, driving it underground.
Before theoretically the buyer would state in the review they got the product for free.
Ebooks are an exception.
And when you have a new product, you need reviews to compete.
So to survive, many sellers feel they are forced to cheat.
Amazon does a lot to fight fake reviews.
BBC is looking at uk fake reviews, the us is a lot worse.
For an author, "verified purchase" doesn't seem to cover Kindle Unlimited reads. I get reviews from people who have read the book but didn't purchase it outright. "Verified Purchase" doesn't help ebooks.
Ultimately, selling books depends on direct contact with the readers and word-of-mouth. You can buy your way up the sales rank for a while, but it won't last. The Amazon marketplace has a lot of gravity. Sales rank plummets without steady sales.
If Althouse ever wrote a book, she'd be able to sell a lot of copies... just sayin'.
iowan2 beat me to the banana slicer. Since this is an Amazon portal, presumably portaled links to Amazon are OK...
How about 50 gallons of lube or the ever important topic of How to Avoid Huge Ships?
"Because other people do bad things, so should I." What an asshole.
I think it would be interesting to write a really negative review that made people want to buy the product even more.
That's easy. Pretend to be, say, a creationist reviewing a book about evolution. Talk about how dangerous it is because the arguments seem so factual and convincing. About how it seems to explain so many puzzles but I know it isn't true. Grudgingly admit that the author DOES write well. Etc.
Some of the negative reviews of David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor made me want to read the book. But it wasn't as good as the bad reviews led me to believe (and it does not deliver on the subtitle).
Amazon works pretty hard at finding and punishing fake or promoted reviews. If I pay for a review of one of my books and Amazon finds out, they are likely to take it off Amazon.
I used to ask professors who use my text in their class to ask their students to write a review if they like the book.
I also used to give a considerable discount for student purchases until CreateSpace eliminated their e-store and my ability to do this.
Last year I found that soliciting reviews like this violates my terms of service with Amazon so I have stopped doing it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-bad-review-practices-crackdown-2018-4
John Henry
Ray, ReviewMeta is not that good. It flagged several of my reviews, and I know for sure they're real.
It's not difficult to weed through the reviews. The best negative ones have to describe the faults of the product in detail. There has to be several of them as well.
I'll look at the responses to the negative reviews to see if the business owner weighed in.
Just writing "Good product, will buy again," means nothing.
"That's why we'll be subscribing to Consumer Reports when we buy our next car.* I just got tired of trying to find a honest source."
I have a mechanic I've learned to trust over a good many years who works on most makes.
That's who I will consult.
So..did Iain Taylor get paid to be in the article?
Hey..everyone's doing it.
I think I can spot the fakes on Amazon pretty quickly. I also read a lot of indie kindle books, and you can tell the awful ones with a lot of 5 star reviews just by reading the (usually author written) book blurb. Awful blurb: awful book. ("Look Inside" is helpful for borderline cases).
I am bemused by the 5 star amazon book reviews which read something like: "Book arrived quickly and in good condition." Yes, that's helpful.
Reviews - like anything else - are a tool. I read the most critical reviews and it's pretty easy to tell if someone's full of it or if there's a problem with the product. Especially if the same concerns keep popping up.
rhhardin wins the internet today. Game over.
I usually go about it the other way- look for what is wrong with a product in online discussions. This doesn't mean you can necessarily trust a negative review of something, but it is somewhat less likely that a competitor will pay someone write a fake negative review of a product- at least that would be my base assumption.
I don’t read reviews of books. I just download a sample.
Regarding the Copper Meditation Pyramid, if it's good enough for the archangel Urinal, it's good enough for me.
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