Slashdot Mirror
Belkin's Amazon Rep Paying For Fake Online Reviews
remove office writes "I recently discovered that Belkin's lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company's products favorably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they've ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to 'Write as if you own the product and are using it... Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours.' Ironically, he was using Amazon's own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn't get caught? Are Slashdotters aware of other examples of other such blatant astroturfing on behalf of a large tech company like Belkin?"
I will review any piece of crap i know nothing about for money.
I'm more surprised that there aren't more companies caught doing this. Its like being surprised that a professional was using hGH or 'roids.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Belkin have a history of dodgy behavior and should be avoided where possible. Their last trick was hijacking something like 1 in every thousand http connections and directing them to an advertising site.
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html
This company should be avoided where possible.
Microsoft gave some nice Ferrari laptops to some bloggers recently. It's easy to figure out to whom: just google favorable Vista reviews.
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/vista.html
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I missed out. If anyone wants me to review their products, I'm sure I can do it for the right price.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
It was recently reported that the Chinese government pays 300,000 astroturfers to go online and talk positively about the Chinese and the chinese government. Basically a modern day propoganda campain (melamine and lead based toys sold separately).
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I bought a Belkin wireless router a couple years ago because it was around $35 which was $15 less than I could find anywhere. What a mistake. The configuration interface is pathetic, and the configuration options are severely lacking. I ended up just putting it into an 'antenna' mode and hooking it up to a Linux box that handles all the routing. A few friends of mine have similar experiences/opinions about Belkin products that I only heard after mentioning my own problems with one.
The model number is F5D7230-4, if anyone cares.
Look through the history of the article and its talk page and you find the CEO's mark and those of Zango employees all over it.
Why did Belkin even both to do this? They make wonderful products. Just the other day, I got a Belkin Tunebase FM Transmitter with ClearScan for iPod and it was my best purchase ever. It plays my ipod over the radio with amazing fidelity, and my truck gets better gas mileage to boot. I've sold my home and I'm living out of my truck because the sound is so much better. (Where's my money?)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews. It'd pretty much finish them, at least with Amazon customers. This is extremely annoying and we need to make it as painful as possible.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It wasn't personal, I'm just supposed to do that after I post my glowing review of the belkin backpack as anon. otherwise I dont get paid.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Anyone with a brain who has checked out any product online, be it cars, computers or anything, finds a user group or ten with reviews. Some reviewers have used the product. Some reviewers have not. There is always "this is the bestest thing in the whole world" review. And there is the "this is the largest POS known" review. You toss the lovefest, and toss the POS review. Trust the middle. If all the reviewers seem happy, then it's probably good. If they all hate, then not so much. You are your own editor.
As people spend less and less money, expect retailers and the vendors themselves to perform any "guerilla" tactics necessary to get you to spend your cash on their products.
Businesses with management who have yet to embrace the Internet or mobile aspects of "word of mouth" and marketing will lose market share to those that do this sort of thing.
Is it wrong to abuse online comments/reviews, sure, but it's no different that paying people to stand in line on a product launch day or hiring false paparazzi to follow an up-and-coming celeb.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Shillington Labs provides independent product reviews. Our corporate motto is: "Product Reviews, Your Way!"
My wife posted a bad review of one company on Amazon- it really wasn't even bad, it was Neutral. They missed shipping their product by Christmas when there was time. And they kept calling us...once at 11pm at night. We weren't answering and thought they would give up but the harassment continued.
So finally she answered the phone and they offered her a bribe to remove the review. They offered to pay for the item she ordered. Sadly, she accepted.
So apparently this sort of manipulation of reviews is not uncommon.
I went into an electronics store recently and the staff let me try out wireless adapters to find out if it would work on my laptop ( running Ubuntu 8.04 at the time ). The first one we tried was a Belkin USB adapter and it worked fine. I brought it and haven't regretted my purchase in the slightest, in fact, I'd purchase more. The signal strength was way better than other adapters I'd used and it's never dropped the connection ( to a Linksys WRT54G ).
I'd probably recommend them for their hardware but it seems their ethics need to catch up.
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
Although there is no way to prove any of this, 2 incidents immediately come to mind:
1) While reviewing The Orange Box game set on Amazon and seeing all the complaints about Steam, some guy actually had the nerve to make the assertion "Steam single handedly resurrected PC gaming" - as well as other off the wall comments like bragging about how many millions they've sold. After I highlighted a few statements of his and responded to his review - and implied twice that he must work for steam - the entire review and all the responses mysteriously disappeared.
2) Amazon's own reading device, Kindle. When it was released initially, you had people literally declaring war on anybody that said anything even remotely negative about it. Even if they complained about how certain features work, they would fall victim to endless insults and accusations of not having used the product. It was an all out witch hunt.
The article site appears to be slashdotted.
OTOH, I'm using a Belkin router. Do you think they'd dare...?
Yes, the above is obviously a troll. Microsoft doesn't need to pay people to write positive reviews, they just get their staff to shill on their behalf on sites like Slashdot.
Sites like Thepiratebay don't generally have people hired by the entertainment industry writing favorable reviews about, say, Snakes on a Plane. There are advantages to buying, selling, and aquiring things illegally. People don't lie -- after all, their reputations are on the line. And depending on what's being bought and sold, sometimes quite a bit more.
There's an irony that illegal business is the most honest kind.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
As the build up of Vista 7 started it became apparent to me that this sort of thing was happening on Digg.com. Critical review of Microsoft simply disappeared as anything was just dugg way down to hide it.
It seemed readily apparent to me that someone was artificially altering anything Microsoft or Windows on Digg.com. I noticed a change where anything negative about Microsoft and Vista were dugg down and anything positive was dugg up. It didn't matter if the negative was spot on and making valid points, it was dugg down. Anything about Microsoft was dugg up. Even if the company was doing nasty things still.
I attributed it to: 1) either a few people had been creating multiple accounts in order to influence the vote, 2) people were being paid by Microsoft to go to digg and change the outcome, or 3) a bunch of Microsoft employees were actively seeking to alter the vote to make Vista 7 and Microsoft look better.
I also noticed several other people commenting as they saw the same thing.
This was like an overnight thing. One day everyone is telling it like it is about Vista and Microsoft and the next day anything anyone said that was negative was dugg way down. Anything positive was dugg way up, even if it was utterly false and few in the face of history.
I will say that Digg.com has declined. I have had to bury a slew of articles that were purely fluff, and moreso of late. Way too many totally stupid posts, uninformative conjecture articles, and poorly thought out pieces that tend to just waste my time.
Combined with the seemingly altered rankings of pro and negative comments regarding Microsoft and Vista I concluded that Digg.com was headed for a big decline.
Now that I see this sort of thing occuring regarding other large company products I can only conclude that there must be something more to my observations on Digg.com
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Why did Belkin even both to do this? They make wonderful products. Just the other day, I got a Belkin Tunebase FM Transmitter with ClearScan for iPod and it was my best purchase ever. It plays my ipod over the radio with amazing fidelity, and my truck gets better gas mileage to boot. I've sold my home and I'm living out of my truck because the sound is so much better. (Where's my money?)
Seriously, the first thing that needs to happen is a bunch of people should "review" Belkin's products with the evidence that they're faking reviews. It'd pretty much finish them, at least with Amazon customers. This is extremely annoying and we need to make it as painful as possible.
Long ago I realized that Belkin made the absolute worst quality electronics of any other company. I was a CTO for a mid sized company and responsible for purchasing all IT hardware. I've never experience 100% failure for any manufacturer before or since. However, every single Belkin product I purchased failed.....every single one! It's not like I bought 2-3 there were upwards of up to 20 or 30 and everything failed - they just quit working.
I worked for a company that did this and we used different computers so we could have different ip addresses. It was pretty funny but our competitors did this as well and were stealing our marketshare.
http://saveie6.com/
Astroturfing is an extremely harmful practice to companies in the long run. I remember a couple of particular travel companies on a site I frequent which did this. The companies themselves had a pretty decent reputation, but a few members were just a little bit too enthusiastic about recommending them, and were outed after a couple of months. Any goodwill the company had instantly collapsed, and any time a new traveler asked for advice relating to these companies, they were told to avoid them because of their marketing practices.
Somewhat strangely, it's actually the successful astroturfing campaigns that do the most damage in the long run. There's thousands of obvious attempts each year which immediately get spotted, and everyone nearly immediately forgets about them. But the few times it flies under the radar and is "trusted", the loss of that trust upon discovery is total and final, and it'll take years for the company to recover (if they ever do).
That explains the shitty Belkin Nostromo N52 I have here, gathering dust.
3-4 paid2post FraUDsters, 24/7 on the 'ms as monopoly' forum. not only were we there for them, but we were deleted dozens of times for our assertions towards the FraUDs. that's wayback when robbIE was just starting to take advertising from the softwar gangsters. just before he himself became a phony stock markup payper FraUD billionerror. does anyone know of any other big fakes in the decaying blog 'industry'?
First, Belkin is astroturfing Amazon and Newegg. Next thing you'll be telling me is that Monster Cable's stuff isn't actually any better than the generic stuff!
Some of these products had 50, 5 star reviews.
I marked as helpful the 1-4 star reviews and marked as unhelpful all the 5 star reviews.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I have no doubt in my mind that Belkin is not one of the few. I wouldn't be suprised at all if most major companies do this.
It's just that Belkin did it in such a way that they were easily caught. Don't trust any reviews you see!
By the way, my Netgear router is the best, you should buy one! :)
Criminals get dumber and dumber.
If he was not such a retard he'd just sign up with bogus accounts and write the reviews himself, from a public library terminal.
Actually I think they are getting smarter and smarter.
It's just the ones that don't learn that get caught.
I did business with a web store that offered a cash discount to any purchaser that wrote a glowing review of them on a retailer rating site. The store owner honestly did not seem to understand what was wrong with his new method of promoting his web store. The owner of the retailer rating site had to explain to him what the rating site considered acceptable conduct. I wouldn't have been as nice about it.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I'm not surprised in the slightest; I think the majority of "product reviews" on the internet are corrupted this way. But it works. A friend was looking for floor mats for her car. She pointed out a brand I personally KNEW to be garbage, and said they had "perfect feedback." Well, all the review were written in the same style, and the text even repeated every dozen or so reviews. But she ordered them anyway, and it took her three months to get them to issue an RMA.
Why don't online stores only allow people who actually buy the item to review them like the Iphone App Store has done. It would make the system more honest (though you obviously won't get as many people). It would make buying reviews expensive for companies.
you mean like this post: /. Post
After their fiasco a few years ago where they decided that it was acceptable to program their home routers to occasionally redirect web requests to their own page to sell people things, they hit my "certified 100% evil" list.
There's no getting off that list. I don't care if they start sending me flowers and candy. Nothing they can do will make me consider giving them a dime again. I don't even buy cables from them; last year I ordered a cable online and waited a week for it rather than buy one locally, because the local place only had Belkin cables in that type.
Funny, I wasn't able to find a registered cooperation under that name. It seems like MicroSoft would sue them for the name similarity, if this Micro$oft outfit is at all involved in technology products. I'm guessing from the name that they might make financial software of some sort?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Not much different than the Linux zealot who hasn't touched a Windows machine since 1997
Gee, from looking at your chain of posts it seems you have a certain bias yourself. Have you EVER used a Linux system, or are you in fact the very uninformed Hater you dismiss so readily?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have already left an negative review on a Belkin product on Amazon. If this story makes you mad, you should do the same.
Are they still hiring reviewers?
greed@All_Evils:~#
I saw multiple favorable reviews of a belkin usb hub that has been an utter piece of garbage. I though maybe I had it plugged in wrong or something.
I'd like to see them try this with a book like "The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators II: Differential Operators with Constant Coefficients (v. 2)" by Lars Hörmander and come up with anything that wasn't laughable.
"I liked it! Much better than 'Cats'! I'm going to read it again and again!"
There are a lot of reviews on Amazon and other retail sites written by people who clearly do not own the product. A lot of reviews are written by people who don't understand the concept of a review. You can find reviews for things which aren't even available to buy yet but Amazon have created a product page for. Seems to me there's a very easy to get rid of reviews people are being paid to write or are just idiots - sites should only allow people to post reviews for products which they have actually bought from that site. It would be easy enough to implement, just check against the would be reviewer's order history. Sure there would be a lot less reviews, but the ones that do get posted will worth something. Quality, not quantity.
Obviously more subtle cases would be difficult to prove, as reviews are subjective and intent unknowable.
But in a blatant case like this, where you have an agent of the company describing in writing what is wanted and explicitly stating that the review does not need to be true -- does this provide enough elements to prosecute under any criminal law?
I've built more than a few systems for myself and family. Most of the time I have not had a problem from Newegg. The one time I did have a problem, and it was Negegg's fault, I rated the product as superior and Newegg's service below par. My review never saw the a pixel on the interwebs.
To be fair, it's their website and their bandwidth, but if you take a review or ever a bunch of reviews as the gold standard then you are eventually going to get burned. This should be common sense but maybe not.
This practice is called Meat Puppetry. Hiring shills is a bad idea because it only works until the results start to make a difference. Then somebody notices and your reputation gets shot to hell.
What? You thought magazines were objective and impartial?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I liked it when my Belkin routed me to advertising sites, it was like being kidnapped and taken to a mall! I don't see the issue with them reviewing their own stuff... how else are people going to learn how great their products are? LL Belkin
Are Slashdotters aware of other examples of other such blatant astroturfing on behalf of a large tech company like Belkin?
Yes.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
My current employer does this kind of thing alot, we're part of the game industry. In fact, there are entire companies which are devoted to these kinds of services. You setup secret rewards programs for random people to go around and post good things about you. You setup a moderation system where users can rate the sincerity and effectiveness of other people's posts. People end up writing very reasonable and very believable snippets about your product, and the vast majority of the time they are in no way obvious.
Ultimately the company ends up with a very cheap word of mouth marketing system that can be very effective. You pay out t-shirts and gift certificates and other schwag, and the total cost is a very small part of your multi-million dollar marketing budget. It tends to be quite effective as in many cases the posters are able to effectively blend in with the crowd but still create a positive perspective of your product. I don't know overall how much it helps sales, but it's still being done.
These days I tend to totally ignore most user rating systems, especially if they're driven by comments. I think I used to be pretty skeptical that this kind of thing was feasible, until I found out that my company has it done.
Sony are obviously doing this too. all over the net I see people claiming they're happy with their PS3 and it's the best thing since sliced bread, yet the PS3 section at the video game shop has tumbleweeds blowing through it since all the PS3 owners are busy playing their 360s
I used to work for a certain computing publisher. Getting reviews on Amazon.com was one of the stated goals of our marketing team, and they did this legitimately by sending the book to interested parties and suggesting it (but not expecting it). I don't think there's any harm in doing this.
However, I noticed that a certain other very big computing publisher was extremely quick off the mark with its reviews. Literally, a book would be published and a few days later three reviews would already be up on the Amazon page, all positive. Then, over the following months, maybe a few more would be added. But getting that many so quickly was suspicious.
Now, I can't categorically claim that the reviews were fake, but I'm certainly suggesting it.
Aside from the fact that people buy based on the reviews, Amazon.com appears to rank books based on reviewer comments when you search, along with the actual sales ranking. So this kind of thing is very important.
They did sue Mike Rowe Soft.
Belkin is one of those companies that managed to piss me off years ago. They offshored their customer service and then provided crap equipment.
I lost well over $50 on Belkin hardware for which they never reimbursed me after I sent the defective crap back.
So, like most companies with no ethics, I'm not surprised they'd pay people to write reviews that are worthless.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
This isn't their first bout with dodgy behavior, there was the router that would redirect traffic to an ad page every so often.
Simply put there are tons of competitors of theirs who make better products who don't behave the way they do.
Corporatism != Free Market
Why would they do that? Amazon themselves don't really suffer from false positives. (and remember, years ago they accidentally disclosed the editorial reviews' authors: 50% shills or publishers.)
Positive reviews move product. If anything, they have a real incentive to screen or discourage negative reviews.
Our local computer store doesn't carry Linksys routers, and pretty much has Belkin for it's main stock. I asked why, they said that Linksys they had problems with where the Belkins were stable. I can't stand the way the Belkin's look / feel. Like an massive dirty gray chicklet. I wonder if my local computer company has also been paid off.
Mechanical Turk makes it really easy to do this sort of thing. I played around with Mechanical Turk for a while, but gave it up when it because clear that half (at least) of the jobs there are sleazy to some extent or another.
I'm surprised to hear Belkin is even around, I always thought of them as the low-cost house brand of CompUSA, which is pretty much gone, 'cept for a tiger-direct run web site.
Rather than stocking quality options, they always seemed to stock the cheapest made product, which usually was Belkin.
Who would buy a Belkin product online if they could choose from other manufacturers?
Anyway, to answer the question, the Apple Application store seems to be chock filled with fake reviews from friends of developers. I wish they did a better job of weeding out the obvious astroturf.
how is that different than fraud?
DONT POINT AT THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM!!!
you insensitive clod!
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. FilFilter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. ter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Do I collect my lousy fucking fifty bucks now? I actually did use Vista for the first time last week and I was amazed how inconsistent and bug-ridden that piece o crap really was. They NEED to pay people to shill for em.
Well I don't know about technology sort of stuff, but I do know that on Amazon Stephanie Meyer's agents paid people to give her books good reviews.. that's why you see so many "I loved this book" or other such one liners. Same goes for a the Borders Exclusive Aretha Franklin CD--which sucked balls-- there were people that were writing almost the exact same review give or take a few words. Sickening. I'm sure that hotels and other online review sites have this sort of corruption as well though.
I'm not sure if Monster make coat hangers yet.
Oh, were you talking about cables ?
There are entire websites (which are very big and popular) that focus on misleading information like this. Everything from product reviews, to blog post reviews, creating fake user accounts, selling traffic and so on.
Sites like digital point have thousands of people just waiting too help you scam people into buying your products, sites or services. It makes trying too do online business a pain.
TruePunk | Games
....Amazon themselves don't really suffer from false positives....
That could not possibly be true IF Amazon is an honest business. Any deception, when it get known, will in the long run harm the one who deceives people. Amazon could stop this or at least slow it down to a trickle by only letting their customers who have bought that item write a review on that one and only once. It would have prevented the incident mentioned in the article and boost Amazon's reputation.
All theory is gray
Except huge swaths of doctors are *not* in good health at all. In the "Physician, Heal Thyself", department, they get tricked by HMO politics and overwork, sometimes trashing their diet, too fatigued to exercise, and as mentioned elsewhere, possibly even living on borrowed time just trying to keep going. One of my doctors was in this category.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I found out about it when someone canned "Vertical Limit", one of Sony's movies which was pushed that way, here on Slashdot. Can't find my post anymore....
See Wikipedia or the BBC.
Meanwhile newegg & buy.com will have a hard time telling the good reviews from the bad (Amazon can just check the Mechanical Turk logs). So what will Happen? Reseting the scores was suggested, which is great for Belkin, they get a fresh start. This seems like a win-win for them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I participated a bit in that 'witch hunt'. I don't have a Kindle (I'm hoping there's a rev 2 that's just a bit better than I can bring myself to pull the trigger on buying), but when I was investigating the product, I tried to read the negative reviews. It was pretty frustrating because 80-90% of the reviews were people disagreeing with the concept of the product or its price without having used it.
It was annoying because I like to read reviews of people who have actually purchased and used a product and disliked it, to see if I am likely to run into the same pitfalls... and some people who were upset at the trendiness of the Kindle or whatever felt the need to write nasty reviews that buried the useful nasty reviews in the noise.
So, I voted all of those I saw not helpful and wrote a nasty comment or two.
Parent post is exactly right.
I'll add there is no media market for objective reviews. Please, don't mention consumer reports. That's a single, non-specific source.
Here's an idea that I wish would happen. Have a writer buy something off the shelf and then review it. The costs of which are shared by X number of people. For their contribution, they get to define what to write about in the review and get first dibs on the review content complete with Q&A. The Internet makes this possible, but no one really wants to do it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
They've made it onto my shit-list. They are specifically a company whos products I will avoid, and will avoid recommending in any instance where there is a reasonable alternative. And, due to their product lines, there are always alternatives.
If the company has any brains they will prosecute the manager criminally, or fire HIS boss who put him up to it.
For example, back while she was blogging, an ever-popular blog for writers was that of Miss Snark, a pseudonym of a NYC literary agent. She talked several times about the way agents and authors try to game their reviews and ratings. For example:
"Nonetheless I find it fascinating that buyers have cottoned on to the "five star friend" phenom. Miss Snark is as guilty as the next agent of both writing reviews (hey I DO like this book...I didn't exactly buy it though) and soliciting friends, relatives and passersby on the street to do the same. Time for a new strategy I guess....finding books from your cross town rivals and writing 1 star scathing reviews."
It's not just getting everyone you can to rate your book well -- it's also things like "front loading" (having your family, friends, agent, dog, whoever) buy as many copies as they can to boost the sales figures and attract more attention / make potential customers less hesitant to purchase it.
Hey, it's sales... In the words of Miss Snark:
Adding insult to injury, you tell me the book was "warmly received by reviewers". What you mean is that Amazon has good reviews, so I know you're not playing on my side of the street.
Here's some help: "reviewers" at Amazon are not reviewers. They're reader comments. Generally anonymous.
In case anyone else hasn't mentioned this to you yet, Amazon reviews don't meet criteria of an objective review. (Miss Snark loves snarky reviews of course). You'd be better off to tell me your mom liked it.
Tonight's Special: Leg of Salmon
Sure, just look at any thread discussing Apple products and you'll see the astroturfers come out in full force here on /.
I laughed so hard from that one that I swear I thought there might be a chance I'd have a heart attack and die. But I realized that if I did go that way, I would at least be able to think "Wow, Monty Python were right".
"awkward placing of button X on the right side causes me to accidentally hit it on occasion."
or
I often find myself searching with my fingers for buttons Y/Z on the left side because they're too small"
Reading statements like that from a personal usage perspective, it's clear that he's actually used the product. However, just because the reviewer didn't state plainly that they purchased or borrowed it, they got modded unhelpful, and received a slew of insulting comments. It was an all out attack on the credibility of anyone who didn't like the product, and that's why I considered it a witch hunt.
were tired of the babies crying about it
Ya..that's a balanced counter point.
Or *maybe* people had legitimate problems with Vista which did so poorly Microsoft had to extend the life of the previous version before announcing the early release of Windows 7.
Vista was an over-grown beta. Get over it.
Quack, quack.
Like the 2 supposedly healthy ER docs at my hospital that dropped dead. One was on his treadmill, and the riding a bike when it happened.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The Internet is where people can interact anonymously. I can write someething that you can't trace back to me personally, so no matter what I say or do, it has no effect on the rest of my life.
I try to explain how incredibly dangerous this is to people. If you could drive a car and never, ever suffer any consequences of either personal injury or responsibility for damages you cause many people would drive recklessly and irreponsibly. Why not? Well, this is pretty much the situation on the Internet.
Everyone's "net friend" Lori Drew is likely to get off completely. Now did she directly reach out and kill someone? No, but partly because her obnoxious behavior happened on the Internet she is likely to receive no punishment, fine, saction or anything else. Most people that get "caught" doing evil on the Internet have no one but themselves to blame, because they bragged about it, often publicly. What about the folks that can keep quiet? Nothing ever happens to them.
So, if someone offered you $100 to stand in front of a movie theater telling people what a great movie you just saw when you hadn't seen the movie you probably wouldn't do it. However, offer someone $100 to write 10 reviews on the Internet about products they have never heard of and they often will. Because they have no personal connection with writing those reviews. Nothing at stake, so nothing to stop them.
Lots of people grew up with the idea that things "in print" are reliable. Basically, the Internet is "in print" and no part of it can be trusted at all. Think you are getting the real story anywhere at all> Why? Is it because you trust the person that wrote it? Why would you trust them? Why do you even believe the author is really the person identified with whatever it is you are reading? If you see something supposedly written by Barak Obama on the Internet why would you believe he wrote it? Were you there when he did it? Why couldn't it be anyone (me, for instance) just using his name? Why wouldn't anyone do that? Because it is wrong?
Anyone that really trusts a review, news article, diary, or anything else on the Internet needs to have some bad things happen to them so they wise up. Why do you think people are endlessly taken in on scams? Because they trusted something on the Internet.
I was a virgin; I believe those reviews on amazon; I thought they were totally impartial. Now you tell me there's this astroturfing! can I trust noone nowadays?
I had something similar to happen to me. I gave a software engineering book a poor review, and it was removed without explanation a month or so later. I waited 6 months and submitted a watered-down version of same review under an alias, which has remained since. This is perhaps why you rarely see any grades below "C" on Amazon reviews. Publishers apparently bully Amazon and readers.
Table-ized A.I.
Treadmill and bike at the same time? Doesn't he know you aren't suppose to multitask?
I don't preview or spellcheck.
It seems a lot of your comments are pro-Microsoft. I wonder why.
It's a very dark ride.
Not only because they both have the same family name, but because Michael clearly makes a case for Reviewing Products You Haven't Used...
Best Regards,
Durval Menezes.
I have never met a computer that didn't like me.
Is this really news?? Most positive product review are sappy BS about the product being the best thing since sliced bread or the internet, with very little insightful commentary. That leads me to believe they're always fake. I consider product reviews a form of advertising. And since most consumers, who are already easily influenced (such as by TV commercials and other mass advertising) won't bother looking for articles about fake reviews, the fake reviews will do their job, and convince people to buy the product. If you really want to find out about a product, you can dig through all the BS to find a review with insightful commentary (and then do some cross reference to verify the claims), but that can be difficult. I find it more helpful to read all the negative reviews of a seller or product. If the negative reviews don't paint a horrible picture, you can use them to weigh the product's or service's faults against its claimed benefits.
Based on my past experiences, whenever I now see the Belkin name on an electronic product I turn around and run away as fast as I can.
For example.
"You are only young once, but you can be immature forever." -www.animemusicvideos.org
Company X is Belkin -- Belkin had a router which would redirect an occasional page view to an ad -- and which could be reconfigured from the OUTSIDE. They tried to make this sound less bad with Usenet postings, then deleted the postings later.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I'm not terribly surprised. I've run across reviews that seemed too thorough (and condescending) to be something composed by your average consumer. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt Belkin is the only one that's paying people to pimp up their reviews.
It's a pretty safe bet that the good reviews are going to be astroturfed to some degree. If you don't assume that, you're living in a dream world. If you look at the bad reviews, you can see what pissed people off about the product. If what they say resonates for you, don't buy it. Sometimes what they say just indicates that they don't know what they're doing. But you can be pretty sure that they weren't astroturfed.
Although I suppose at some point manufacturers might start astroturfing the bad reviews too...
It used to be that marketing and sales reps would pressure print publications to give them favorable reviews. Most of the glossy automobile magazines were entirely PR--this is why Consumer Reports content is so different from those publications, so much more accurate, and so much more expensive. Now people turn to online forums for information. But amazon.com, for instance, is making money from selling the products reviewed on their sites. Given that, there's an incentive to both put their finger on the scale, and also to allow their sellers to do the same. So this is an extension of old practices.
There is a related problem with FOSS. It's amazingly hard to get useful and reliable reviews of FOSS--comparisons that allow one to make intelligent decisions. I've ended up spending literal weeks studying FOSS products because of it. And it's not too difficult to see why. I am posting this anonymously because I don't want to deal with hate mail. There's trolls out there for just about any FOSS product--some who will even mix it in just because they like starting fights. Editorial independence--that is something that has value. In time, I think, we will have to start paying for it in actual money.
This isn't about Linux. This is about companies using others to artificially alter reviews and to jury rig rating systems.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This isn't about Linux. Stay on point.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
They did sue Mike Rowe Soft.
And gave it up. The bad PR wasn't worth it. That will be the case here too, I'm sure.
Still, it does seem that sleaze is in the breeze lately.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I don't have a Kindle (I'm hoping there's a rev 2 that's just a bit better than I can bring myself to pull the trigger on buying)
Get an Acer Aspire One instead. My Aspire One has 1gb of ram and a 160gb hard drive, lots of room for plenty of books and other odds and ends (Commodore 64 emulator and games, for example). It came with Windows XP on it, but I reformatted that and installed Fedora 10.
You get a nice-sized ebook reader (I use recommend the FBReader software) and a cute little functional laptop, too.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The funny thing about this is that I actually think Belkin makes really great grade A products from routers, to USB hubs, to cables, everything top quality . . . but now you probably don't believe me, because you think I'm a shill.
I use a belkin home router and it is awful. I have a high-speed internet connection and if I try to download something via wireless it gets blocked and I need to restart the router. Turning firewall off didn't help. Very crappy product...
Surely Slashdot has some stats on the behavior of various large corporate interests, yes?
The main reason people fall for scams is because they are greedy.
As the wise old adage goes, "You can't scam an honest man."
...you should know too that any favorable review of a belkin product is suspicious. what bugs the heck out of me, for example, is how their ups units are disposable, even within the warranty period. and how you cannot find a replacement battery from them (or from a compatible third party).
(ok, i was not able to find replacement batteries for that ups of them i had that croaked on me. maybe today it's easier, but at the time... ditto the warranty: maybe they've started to stand by it these days, but last year...)
ac
p.s.: (off-topic) Taco, if you are reading this (or anyone with a strong enough kung-fu to have this added to future versions of slashcode), could you add a button for us who prefer the 'oldskool' slashdot, please? i hate the current version and am using 'noscript' with ffox to make slashdot behave kinda like the old version. i'd prefer if slashdot behave with ffox the way it behaves with msie 6. thank you.
[citation needed]
I recently bought a USB TV Adapter for a "premium" computer from the "premium" computer store in the mall. The "premium" computer's web site had a 5-star rating.
The first device stopped working after 3 hours. I exchanged the device; but now the included software is very unreliable for scheduled recordings. (It works fine for live TV; my computer significantly exceeds the requirements.)
I don't understand how something that's so unreliable can get a 5-star rating.
No, I will not work for your startup
I honestly don't see why someone needs to pay Belkin to promote their gear positively. It's good gear. Good quality, decent performance. Belkin's biggest downfall is that it is grossly overpriced compared to it's competitors. An 8' Cat6 cable just should not cost $25, when I could buy a length of cable, some ends, and a crimping tool, for about $20 (ok maybe not THAT cheap, but you get my drift...) Of course, now we see it's because Belkin's spending too much money having people promote itself on Amazon (and who knows how many other websites - there are a large number of positively-reviewed products on NewEgg and such, that I have to wonder what the people were thinking....)
Can anyone tell me if these reviews are real or astroturfed? Of 271 reviews, almost half are five-star:
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM/
Tag lost or not installed.
Lori Drew should get off completely: While her behavior was awful, reprehensible, socially unacceptable, vindictive and destructive, it was not illegal -- and the effort to stretch the laws on the books to make them fit her crime is harmful to society as a whole, but will not undo the events that she started.
Lori Drew, by the way, made a point to people that there actions on the Internet are not necessarily permanently anonymous -- and, at least as importantly, that these actions have real-world consequences; Mz. Drew undoubtably would not have written what she did had she realized it would result in a suicide, even if she had had reason to believe her pseudonymity would be maintained. Perhaps the next person tempted to take actions with potential for similar consequences will think twice.
True that an outright deception would bite them, but hype and adjective-littered gushing hardly seem to have done so. They still move *plenty* of books. (myself included, it's still cheaper than a college bookstore on average.) Even the mighty Newegg allows noncustomer reviews. (thankfully, they also allow you to filter them out.)
If he was not such a retard he'd just sign up with bogus accounts and write the reviews himself, from a public library terminal.
Actually, he did. Check out this link from Google cache.
I did a google search for Belkin Bayard, and it returned that link. He had an Amazon account under M. Bayard, and he was reviewing Belkin products. His Amazon account has been renamed to B. Ekim "BE" presumably to avoid detection. (Mike spelled backwards. This guy is a master of disguise.) If you click on his profile, you'll see his nickname is listed as "mikebayard". He only reviews Belkin products, and he only gives 5 star reviews. His listmania is a series of Belkin products.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
Maybe he was just riding a bike on the treadmill. That's not really multitasking now, is it?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
hasn't it? What about the stories about Microsoft?
Gary Null, the quack health guru, has his employees writing reviews of his "books".
Mark Bernstein, who sells hypertext software for the Macintosh, unsubtly suggests that he'll advertise on your blog if you mention his products,
Why not? Look at Pogue's coverage of Apple products at NYT. Absolutely objective!!
There's an irony that illegal business is the most honest kind.
It's not illegal where they come from. It's just illegal here ... but that's not their fault.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
How did this get modded up? No, that's a bribe. By removing her review she is supporting the idea that bad experiences don't happen with such a product/company but they do. Viewers won't see a negative opinion when there are some and there have been. Whether or not it's been taken care of, that part of the experience is now missing from the reviews.
$100 to give reviews of movies people haven't seen? Some people will have sex with a stranger for less than that. Some people KILL for less than that. You could offer $10 and you'd have people lined up a mile to say they liked a movie that they hadn't seen, it's just that on the internet, you can offer less.
Cherrypal anyone? Astroturfing on a huge scale, for a product that was never, and will never be, available. One of the "brand angels" even resorted to claiming to have received theirs, with such detailed reviews as "it's sooo tiny".
Gameloft regularly gets their employees to post favorable reviews for its iPhone games on iTunes and other review sites.
this is the same crap that we can see at imdb.com, you cant trust in the reviews now.
29.5% of the reviewers thought that Snakes on a Plane was the best movie ever? (score 10), hahahaha, sure*
Why don't sites give a "review token" with each product purchased. (via the order shipment email) so that they can authenticate reviewers as only those who purchased. They could also ensure that each token is used only one time.
Treadmill and bike at the same time? Doesn't he know you aren't suppose to multitask?
Maybe he just didn't want to get his feet dirty.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
However I must admit this doesn't always work, for example I was reviewing headphones and there was an elitist audio expert which marked them down.
To be fair, you were buying audio equipment. It could have been anything from not having gold-plated connectors or $3000/ft cables to not having cherry wood knobs or not having been shipped in crushed velvet inside a vacuum-sealed, anti-static pack.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I stopped using Digg *over two years ago* because it had become a worthless POS full of sensationalist-attention-getting-vacuous-submissions, a partisan, pack-modding, friend-promoting, adolescent-mentality, moronic, herd-driven mouth-breathing circle jerk.
(There was a really good critique of it on Kuro5hin, but it seems to have disappeared).
The irony of these two sentences back-to-back cannot be overstated.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Most people that get "caught" doing evil on the Internet have no one but themselves to blame, because they bragged about it, often publicly. What about the folks that can keep quiet? Nothing ever happens to them."
Indeed, this one was only caught because someone stumbled across the Mechanical Turk listing for this. Now, I am wondering, what does Jeff Bezos think about this?
Haha, that's some funny shit.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
I worked for a company that used to do this all the time - positive reviews submitted by employees of the company on various sites, posing as customers of the company. It is a successful online company.
The culture of a place can go a long way to convincing employees that this is the normal thing to do, and that it's just a part of doing business in this competitive world. Brings to mind Stanley Milgram's obediance experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment