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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
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...
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
What I find exceptionally absurd about this is that author of the article, Riyad Kalla, is complaining about fake reviews on Amazon, but the TFA has a link to another article in the "related articles" section, by the same author, celebrating that Denon one you mention. So he finds fake reviews hilarious, except when he doesn't. And writes articles about them in both cases.
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...
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.