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Amazon Fake Products and Fake Reviews
rsk writes "The first time I came across fake reviews on Amazon, it was hilarious. Using Amazon's Window Shop app, I came across a great category, 'Peculiar Products,' and was more than happy to look through it. Almost every one of the products I found on the list (Uranium Ore, 1 Gallon of Milk, Parent Child Test, Fresh Whole Rabbit) were fake, with thousands of reviews on them. As a shopper, I wasn't aware of how easy it was to apparently fake product reviews and it bothers me. When I'm shopping, the first (and a lot of times only) place I visit is Amazon to read the reviews if I'm in the market for something. I don't expect the reviews to be the word of God, but I do assume a certain level of legitimacy for most of them. While this won't affect my use of Amazon (especially not at this time of the year) I would like to bubble this up to Amazon's attention so some time is spent on improving the quality of the reviews."
Free advice is worth every penny.
*Still* negative function...
Even more shocking is how easy it is to fake penthouse letters.
It's a joke. It's funny. It's not people gaming a system, it's people being funny. It's not some evil corporation pimping it's uranium, it's people who think half life jokes and Back to the Future references are the hip new thing.
One of my friends posted the original joke review to the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt a long time ago and for about a week, we got our kicks writing joke reviews and people approved of them because, well, they were funny. I'm appalled that you think this is gaming the system when it's just regular people having a good time.
As a shopper, I wasn't aware of how easy it was to apparently fake product reviews and it bothers me.
How on earth could that bother you? You didn't notice it until you stumbled into a weird category on some beta app. Do you have any sense of humor?
For what it's worth, Amazon is starting to allow reviewers who ordered the item from Amazon to mark on their review that Amazon confirms them as an owner. So you could probably in the future sort those reviews by those that wrote jokes and those that actually ordered the uranium (my god, how is this not on idle).
It really bothers you? How? Please tell me how I've ruined your shopping experience.
My work here is dung.
Fake post.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This is why Amazon likes to show you the top-rated positive comment and the top-rated negative comment. It's why they have reviewer ratings and the "Vine" program. It's why they have the whole meta-rating system in the first place. Don't ever take the star score at face value. Put more weight behind confirmed real names. Read review comments. It's not that hard to figure out.
If there is money or prestige involved, generally there are lies involved.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
It's funny.
Laugh.
If such an innocent thing bothers you, I dread to think what else you disapprove of.
These reviews are just light-hearted humour, and to be honest, they ARE hilarious (always have been, always will be) and often just the perfect thing to make you smile after a boring three-hour meeting.
You want to "bubble this up to Amazon"? Seriously, don't you have anything better to do?
Here's a bizarro product, and the 1000's of customer reviews (with pictures) that were submitted:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000IZGIA8/ref=s9_simh_co_p263_d4_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=left-1&pf_rd_r=0964R987N5R9BZSJ4NP6&pf_rd_t=3201&pf_rd_p=1263271162&pf_rd_i=typ01
Here is a big example: the release of Spore. That game had thousands of bad reviews because of the DRM. People who never played/bought the game.
/. article, but maybe that is just me
Actually the review issue will be super simple to fix: if somebody buys a product from Amazon, if they also write a review on the product, there will be a special piece of text that says that the user who left the review bought the product from Amazon. To get rid of most of the bad/fake reviews, all Amazon needs to do is require that all reviews be from people who actually bought the product. This would also eliminate reviews on fake products, since unless the person paid for and bought the paid product, no review for them.
As for fake products, you would think there is some way to flag fake products to alert Amazon about it.
So, Amazon could easily fix these issues with items that are already in place (unless flagging products is not in place, but that sounds like something very odd that should be place if it is not), but it appears they choose not to. Maybe contacting Amazon directly and informing them about this would help out much better than a
The world is how you make it
And how is this different from the myriad vaporware announcements over the past three decades? At least there's some humor in these.
What the article really seems to miss is that there are meta-moderating for the reviews so you see things like "154 of 156 people found the following review helpful"
And when you see a spam bot or some fan boy getting all hot and bothered over some new product that's being preordered, that review gets buried as people vote it down and add comments like "WTF?" So if you're worried about this being an indication that companies or people are gaming the sale of products through reviews, I usually vote that crap down if I see it. And, honestly, these reviews have helped me. Just last week, I was going to order a set of Barska binoculars but half the reviews reported a mirror alignment defect so I didn't care what kind of sale they had on them.
I've rarely if ever found a review that was misleading and rated up.
You have to sign in with a legitimate account to do any of the above so it's not like there are spam bots out there gaming the reviews and the moderation of the reviews. If anyone else has seen this on Amazon, please speak up and link to examples, I'd be interested.
My work here is dung.
Immediately following the script kiddies calling off their DDoS on Amazon, /. posts a negative article regarding Amazon.
Funny timing. Like an infant screaming and kicking trying to show the world that it matters.
This is an issue that you can see Amazon and users taking seriously. If you notice Amazon allows you to meta moderate reviews, as well as comment on reviews. I have spotted a lot of fake reviews by reading comments on reviews, and I make it a point to comment on fake reviews as well providing my rationale for why I think it is a fake review. Just like on slashdot, community moderation is key here.
Amazon also provides an additional level of verification with the "Amazon verified purchase" where by Amazon lets you know that this reviewer at the very least did purchase this product from Amazon.
In the end reviews are like asking for advice. Often you get bad advice, often you get advice from people with hidden motives, and often you get good advice. Amazon's review system is just a representation of real life. Go anywhere on the web, or go call up some real estate agents/mortgage brokers and ask them "When is a good time to buy a house?" and the answer will almost invariably be "If you can afford it, _now_ is a good time to buy a house". They have a hidden agenda they want to push.
I am not singling out real estate agents though. They are doing their job. Dealing with people is dealing with hidden agendas. :)
- Tempestdata
Except if you actually think it doesn't happen with real products too, man, I hate to break down your ideal world bubble.
For a start, even as a joke, a lot of those jokes are just a cross between vandalism and fanboyism. E.g., it's trivial to run into reviews for games which not only aren't out there yet, but don't even have a beta or preview or much information out yet. I remember particularly Gothic 3 -- which eventually turned out to be a buggy bad joke -- which although just announced, and, really, all the information about it were a couple of screenshots that their engine works, and there were already gushing reviews for it on Amazon. You know, TEH GRATEST GAME EVAR!!! kinda reviews.
It's vandalism because even if it may be identifiable as an unfunny joke at that moment, fast forward a year and it's just noise in the actually useful signal.
Actually, even your kind of jokes sound like vandalism to me. It's having fun at the expense of spamming a useful resource and confusing the heck out of anyone who isn't magically aware whether the "Three Wolf Moon T-shirt" is a real product to buy or a joke, and whether the good or bad reviews are actual reviews or someone's bad idea of a joke.
You know, sorta like the guys posting goatse and rickrolling links on an unrelated mailing list. I don't doubt that in their deranged little brains it passes for freaking hilarious, but the rest of us just wish they'd die in a fire.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The article complains that obviously fake products are allowed to have fake reviews, and then makes the assumption that fake reviews must be allowed for real products. This does not necessarily follow. It might; but it seems a bit more likely that Amazon just might put a little more care into reviews of real products than into fake ones. I have no idea... I'm just pointing out the fallacy.
This exists! It's called Amazon Verified Purchase. See, for example:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R23WKI375G1JJM
I don't know if their ranking algorithm rates reviews from verified purchases higher or not, but wouldn't be surprised...
Unsure if in an article or the comments, but it's arguably the most famous so surprised it wasn't mentioned.
$1000 Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
The reviewers didn't seem to get the Parent Child Test. Unless I miss my guess, the cost of $10,000+ coupled with the "cool" figurine is the test. If someone orders it, they are clearly fascinated with shiny figurine toys and completely lack any concept of money, ergo they are children.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Since the big October 27, 2010 change to Google search, in which "places" results appeared at the top of web search, reviews have become much more important. Google's web search was mostly based on links, but Google Places is heavily driven by reviews. For a local business, there typically are few reviewers, so spamming reviews is far more effective than creating link farms.
Google is not too good at filtering out phony businesses, either. See "Dominating Google Maps- The Most Effective Spam Ever And What You Can Learn From It", from an aggressive search engine optimization firm. That's an outright scam that fools Google easily.
Over on Bing, it's even worse. Search Bing for "New York City Locksmith". All 5 of the Bing locations listed are the same company, and they don't really have all those locations.
The only reviews I take at all seriously are at epinions.com and ConsumerReports.org .
And I read only the negative reviews for anything, anyway. Once I'm looking at something reviewed, I probably already want it, so I'm looking for reasons not to get it. And negative reviews are harder to write convincingly without actually knowing something about the thing and its context, anyway. Anyone mad enough at something to go to all that trouble is itself an honestly negative review.
--
make install -not war
I wonder if one prong of an organized DDoS attack on site X is posting a story about site X on slashdot. More likely all of the hubbub has the conspiracy center of my brain in overdrive...
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
That's why they started including the "verified purchase" link. If the reviewer bought the product through Amazon before leaving the review, that flag is applied to the review. It's intended to make consumers more confident that the reviews are from real owners of the product.
At the same time, it was another way Amazon was trying to put some parameters around its reviewer community. A lot of them out there are very picky about their status as reviewers, and many voiced concerns about people who were just going online and writing reviews for anything and everything. The way I figure it, most shoppers will be able to tell the difference between a well-thought out review, and a lot of the brief first impressions, one-liners, and flames ("It didn't work out of the box--I'll never buy from that company again!") that abound.
For the record, I am a regular reviewer at Amazon, but don't get my undies in a bunch about the interal squabbles. I'm happy being a top-2,000 reviewer for now, and hope to make the top 100 someday. Contrary to Amazon's advice, which states that shorter reviews are most helpful, some of my highest rated reviews are quite long and fairly detailed. I always try to include information that might make a difference in someone's purchasing decision--the same type of information I was often seeking before making a purchase.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Now I'm gonna have to crush like 20 yellow Fiestaware pitchers to test my homemade GM tubes. Thanks for nothing Amazon.
If you look closely, there's actually a pretty thorough disclaimer for these products.
"Disclaimer: While we work to ensure that product information is correct, on occasion manufacturers may alter their ingredient lists. Actual product packaging and materials may contain more and/or different information than that shown on our Web site. We recommend that you do not solely rely on the information presented and that you always read labels, warnings, and directions before using or consuming a product. For additional information about a product, please contact the manufacturer. Content on this site is for reference purposes and is not intended to substitute for advice given by a physician, pharmacist, or other licensed health-care professional. You should not use this information as self-diagnosis or for treating a health problem or disease. Contact your health-care provider immediately if you suspect that you have a medical problem. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition. Amazon.com assumes no liability for inaccuracies or misstatements about products."
Not much left to chance on that.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Some might be, but the uranium probably isn't. You can also order it from United Nuclear. The vendor on Amazon, Images SI, has a website that offers various scientific kits, geiger counters, and, yes, radioactive samples like the same uranium ore they sell on Amazon.
Granted, Tuscan Whole Milk is now wholly fake, but it might have been real at one point. I've even seen a Tuscan Milk truck here in Massachusetts.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Even more shocking is how easy it is to fake penthouse letters.
A lot of people joke about this, but penthouse actually sends fact finders out to verify all penthouse letters. They talk to all the parties involved, and require a reenactment before publishing.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Actually, no I don't, Gramps! Was it steam powered-then? Gettin' off yer lawn!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Skip the positive reviews. 5 star ratings are worthless. If it's an expensive item, people are going to have a favorable opinion because they have to justify to themselves why the TV/card/widget they just dropped a few paychecks on is the greatest they've ever had, and it's perfect in every way. Many people never also own a competing product to give first hand experience why they opinion is justified. You also get the "astroturf" reviews from people who have a financial interest in pumping up the product -- many are right out of press releases. At 3 or 4 stars, people start telling about how good it is, except for a couple issues that nag them (short battery life, cheap knob broke off, missing a feature a competitor has, etc). 1 and 2 stars usually are for broken products/QA issues. It's often a shipping or DOA complaint,but sometimes there are a bunch of low because the as-sen-on-TV product really is a cheap piece of crap that doesn't do what it claims. Lousy customer support complaints also live here.
Here an example of how funny fake reveiws help drive incredible sales of a real item. http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve-Medium/dp/B000NZW3J8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=apparel&qid=1291935780&sr=8-3-catcorr
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds