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Amazon.com Pierces Reviewer Anonymity
theodp writes "Amazon reviewers who anonymously posted book reviews or signed their critiques only as 'a reader from (fill in the city)' lost their anonymity this week when their identities were revealed on Amazon's site. Among those named were prominent authors who posted glowing five-star reviews of their own work. The weeklong glitch, which Amazon fixed after outed reviewers complained, provided a rare glimpse at how writers and readers are wielding the online reviews as a tool to promote or pan books when they think no one is watching. An Amazon spokeswoman told the NY Times the problem was 'an unfortunate error.'"
For those who have no newborns to sacrifice: Google link
If Amazon.com is repeatedly stating that anonymity is guaranteed for book reviews, what the hell is the purpose of collecting full names from their creators?
There's at least one technical explanation: if Amazon didn't link each review with a reviewer, it would be harder to prevent someone from filling out a hundred reviews of the same title to skewer the average rating.
You may have come across this if you reviewed the same thing twice: you would have received an error telling you that you've already reviewed the item and can't do it again, even if you reviewed it anonymously.
from the Red Dwarf FAQ
What does "smeg" mean?t .html
It's a word made up by Grant Naylor for the characters to use as an all-purpose profanity. Some fans have theorised that it was derived from "smegma" (a particularly unpleasant bodily secretion), but Rob and Doug deny this. In the interview on the CD included with the Six of the Best box set, they state that "we wanted to invent a futuristic curse word which had the right sort of consonant and vowel arrangement to make it sound like a genuine . . . curse word." In an online chat session, Doug Naylor said "I think it's Latin for clean, also there's an Italian washing machine company called Smeg. Also each of the letters S-M-E-G stand for smelting metal and something to do with the washing machine process." A detailed list of "smeg" references in the show is available at http://www.bristol.u-net.com/smegweb/docs/smeglis
Female Prison Rape in NY
By analogy with the distinction between grass and astroturf (artificial grass used on football fields), it denotes a fake "grass-roots" campaign. That is, it gives the appearance of there being a movement of normal, everyday citizens concerned about an issue, while it is in fact wholly manufactured by corporate propoganda.
Astroturfing
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
If I recall correctly, Sony got nailed for using a fake critic by the name of David Manning to doctor favorable reviews for their just released movies
It would not surprise me if authors were INDEED promoting their own works courtesy of public forums like amazon and the like.
Join the TWIT army now!
It's ironic that this request comes from an executive officer of a security company. OTOH, their credibility had already bugun to slide since they changed their focus to litigation and Microsoft press releases.
Free the West Memphis Three!
OOC, where does that phrase (astroturfing) come from? I don't think I've seen it before.
Astroturf is the fake grass used in (American) football stadiums -- especially those with roofs -- in place of real grass, because it's more durable and doesn't require sunlight or watering.
A "grass root" action or campaign is one that is started spontaneously, and is largely sustained, by private persons, as opposed to politicians, corporations, or public relations firms; a "grass roots" campaign comes about because of the popular feelings of some mass of people, as opposed to being the creature of the powerful.
"Astroturfing", then, is a campaign crafted by politicians or spin-doctors, but in such a way as to appear it's the result of popular feeling rather than crafty manipulation by political or corporate elites.
Astroturfing to one degree or another is increasing common in American politics (and business). In reaction to the (often correct) cynicism that politicians and corporations are not acting in the best interests of "the people", an astroturfing campaign attempts to gain legitimacy by appearing to spring forth spontaneously from "the people", like Athena from Zeus's forehead; when it's discovered that the campaign was meticulously crafted and manipulated by the same spin-meisters that public has learned to distrust, the astroiturfing adds to the very cynicism it was designed to circumvent.
One technique of an astroturfing campaign is to induce a number of its supporters to write email, letters to the editor, or in this case, Amazon reviews, in support of the campaign's goals. The campaign instructs the supporters on what to say, how to say it, and where send it, and above all, to make it appear that their indignation, appreciation, joy, or hate is entirely spontaneous and independent -- and thus "real" -- and not at all the product of an orchestrated campaign.
The idea is that the public at large will see lots of apparently "uncoordinated", "spontaneous" and "objective" viewpoints all in line with that of the astroturfing campaign, and will come to believe that if so many of their fellow "citizens next door" believe something, they should believe it too, for all those "independent" viewpoints couldn't have been faked.
With the advent of the internet, it's become even easier to whip up an astroturfing campaign, as the cost of emailing -- especially of emailing a pre-written, sign your name at the bottom email -- is so low. Anonymity, as in the Amazin case, makes it even easier, as one person can play the role of a whole group of like-minded people.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The same John Rechy who wrote "City of Night" and "The Sexual Outlaw" ?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he was hustling reviews on Amazon the same way that his characters hustled and tricked their ways through his books.
Rechy's books disturbed me, which is a good quality in a book. How can I describe them for a Slashdot crowd? Start with William Gibson or Bruce Sterling; subtrace all the "cyber" part of "cyberpunk"; and replace it with gay sex. LOTS of gay sex.
When you need a temporary adress for registration, other useful solutions are Mailinator and TrashMail.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
A far nastier problem I've experienced firsthand on Amazon.com is the tendency of authors to go through the reviews and demand all of the "bad" ones be removed. Amazon.com's policy is to remove negative reviews upon author or publisher request, even if the points stated by the critic were clearly logical, reasonable, and within the guidelines. I know quite a few other people that have had it happen to as well.
The really disturbing thing in the case of the book I was reviewing was that it advocated emotionally & physically abusing adults with disabilities. Regardless of who pointed it out, the author would have any review that wasn't sterling removed, so the book still has a great rating. Most of the ones remaining are either mindless "I know the author and she's really nice" comments that have nothing to do with the book itself, or testimonials from other wives/husbands that feel it's cool to throw things at, scream in the face of, and emotionally one's disabled partner into feeling deeply inferior. VERY disturbing.
I use the same system, and sometimes I get spam, sometimes I don't. I can usually guess whether I will be spammed or not by the apparent sliminess or lack thereof of the site.
I've also signed up using an encoded name (random string, really, that I just link to thier site name in a text file). The 20 or so sites I tested either spammed both (sold the emails) or neither. I didn't find any sites that spammed a random name but didn't spam a name including their name.
everything in moderation
I used to run the review system at Amazon (96-97) and we did get way too many fake author reviews and interviews, even back in 1997.
I had put in place a system later dropped that had the reviews checked by human beings for sense (not content) before they went live. Of course, with thousands of reviews posted each day, that became untenable.
There's no good way to build a system that can't be gamed.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
That's a great write up. You should add it to Wikipedia's Astroturfing entry.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Slashcode can store the IP addresses of non-logged-in AC's. (I obviously have no idea if they do, or if so, how long this persists, but the code is there.) I'm not sure if logged-in AC's are tracked by account, though. (I'd sorta wish they were - sometimes I would like to see replies to AC posts.)
The problem with Amazon.com is that people are asked to rate a book with five stars whether it's "good" or "bad". But likes and dislikes for books are subjective. A better approach is something like www.Allreaders.com uses (Allreaders) which asks reviewers what the book is about rather than what is in the book. That way the author of a book can safely review the book, since the system is only asking for objective criteria, such as plot, setting, and character info, rather than subjective info, whether one "liked" the book.
As a former Amazon.com-paid-monkey, I can tell you that it's not THAT easy to create 100 identities for review purposes. They keep a constant database of every IP and computer that a certain login uses. By doing this, they maintain a constant list of logins that you are "connected to" in some way. If doesn't work for people who use computers in a library setting, where hundreds of people have visited the site, but it still works pretty well. Submitted reviews are checked against this list, to prevent this exact thing from happening.
Don't get me wrong, the programmers at Amazon.com are idiots, but this is one thing they have done a good job on.
Now just don't get me started on the day I discovered ALL their files are set to 777 permissions.... (I swear)
Didn't the story say that he was a reader from Chicago? If so, THIS is the review:
A reader's feast, October 19, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Chicago, IL
This book is moving, hilarious, sad, laugh-aloud funny, touching, and very, very sexy--a feast. The characters are all memorable, Lyle the cowboy who never rode a horse; his Miss America mom--and the minor characters! A finicky female porn entrepreneur and her detested husband and their nasty director, Za-Z La Grande; a "poster" woman whose image is all over the city, "the sexy chicano." The names of the minor characters will knock you over--real names only slightly disguised. Also "Mr. Fielding," an eccentric gambler and the corrupt evangelists, who are vile and at the same time hilarious. Lyle, like Tom Jones, is in and out of unique situations--accidentally in a magician's show, at the playboy mansion "saving" Miss Universe," confronting an exploiter of Star Maps sellers, teenagers--(...) There are poigant moments, with Sister Matilda, gospel singer, and Clarita, the Mexican housekeeper. The song Amazing Grace recurs, and the ending is unforgettable, starting with an Academy Awards ceremony you won't forget.
And yes, funny joke there, but Amazon probably doesn't let you rate your own reviews (I could be wrong, though.)
blog & fiction: jd87
In spite of this obvious attempt to mislead readers, Amazon chose to do nothing. That recommendation is still up there!
I have been doing the exact same thing for many years know and so far there have been four major incidents:
/dev/null, I discovered they were "renting" their spam list out to legit companies (in this case a bank) and claiming it was totally opt-in. Well, I took the opportunity to follow up with the bank that had spammed me using Tigerdirect's mailing list and actually talked to the VP in charge (which is how I found out that it was being misrepresented as opt-in) and based on my conversation with the VP, they immediately cancelled their contract with Tigerdirect. Score one for the little guy!
1) ABC Stores (familiar to locals and tourists in Hawaii) had their customer database stolen. Or at least that's what I think happened. I bought some mac nuts from them because they were the cheapest online place and I really had the cravings for da kine from back home. 6 months later, I started getting porno spam with my REAL name in it sent to the address I used with ABC. When I contacted them and spelled out all the details, they passed it on to their "IT department" who denied that anything had happened, instead tried to blame packet sniffers between their smtp server and my smtp server.
The fact that the spammers had my name meant they also probably had my credit card, address and phone and that of all of their other customers too. (I use one-time use credit card numbers online so I wasn't too worried). Consequently I will never do business with ABC stores again online or b&m (only tourists shop at the ABC b&m anyway). If they don't care about their customer's security, I sure as hell don't want to be their customer. Neither should you.
2) TigerDirect These guys are infamous. Once they get your email address you can not shake them. I bought one thing from them years ago, I must have "unsubscribed" via email and their website 10 times before giving up and shitcanning that address. But before I completely routed it to
3) Inktomi Once upon a time I signed up for a contest to win an SUV. That was stupid because that address got passed around the spammers for years, all kinds of weird spam I got on it too, not the standard penis-enlarger low-grade stuff, but AARP solicitations, timeshare solicitations both domestic and foreign, etc. Finally, long after the dot-bomb after Y2K I got some marketing drivel from Inktomi (remember them? an early search engine) and I was in a bad mood that day. So I scoured their website for every single email address I could find, figured out their standard email addressing scheme (like firstname_lastname@inktomi.com) went to Edgar, got all their C* people's names, the BoD's names and spammed them back with a nasty old flame. One of them must have forwarded it to one of their engineers because all I got back was some guy congratulating me for tracing how they got ahold of that address and then bitching at me for giving them a taste of their own medicine. I told him to fuck off and die like the dirty spammer his company had turned into. I guess he did because shortly afterwards the company got bought for chicken-scratch (I think it was by yahoo), I figured their sinking to spammerhood was a sign the end times were near anyway.
4) Viruses I've received a couple of viruses sent to vendor-specific addresses over the years and used that info tell the vendors that not only did they have a virus infection, but in most cases the specific machine they needed to start with. However, whenever this happens I make a note never to business with that vendor again (even when they've given me a special "discount" as a reward for alerting them to their problems) because if a virus can dig up my email address on their system that means there is a good chance that a virus could dig up more confidential details as well so it speaks to them having poor information security practices.
Most recently I've been mydoom bounces (and direct emails too) from the home computer of this little one-woman ditzhead li
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, RoadRunner will take a customer offline if they do detect that the customer is spamming, or has a virus which is attempting to spread. Try sending an e-mail about her to security_AT_rr_DOT_com. You would probably want to include the message headers, as well.
Crushing dreams at the speed of sarcasm