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Inside the Business of Online Reviews For Hire

Posted by timothy on from the these-hose-clamps-saved-my-life-and-my-marriage dept.

Rick Zeman writes "Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service. The New York Times tells of the rise and fall of the founder of one such hired third party service who had has been so successful planting paid fake reviews that he no longer trusts any online review. He should know. Because of him and his kind, it's estimated that one third of online reviews are fake."

1 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Uh oh, it's time for The "R" word by wisebabo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Well here's something that those tea-partiers and libertarians don't want to hear.

    The "R" word. REGULATION

    Unless you want to live in Somalia, you should realize that there IS an important role for government beyond just self-defense and essential services (like police, fire, waste management). MARKETS need to be REGULATED, with binding rules and penalties for the offenders.

    Don't take it from me, just read up on Adam Smith who called it "The Tragedy of the Commons". (If you don't know who he is, may I suggest you take a basic class in Economics? Hint: he's not a friend of Karl Max).

    Of course Mr. Smith was writing about a simpler time in the18th century; the "commons" he was referring to was that used by grazing cows. So in our MUCH more compex world, it stands to reason that we need a MUCH more sophisticated regulatory system to prevent people like Enron (remember them?) and more recently, investment banks and rating agencies (paid by the people they rate!) from gaming the system. In addition, since more of our commerce is going on-line (yay for shopping in our bathrobes!) regulation needs to follow.

    Unfortunately Romney and crew (who benefit the most from the lack of regulation) are going to try to convince you otherwise. For example they really don't want to restrict the ability of billionaires to dominate elections with their money (alright I guess if you're a billionaire, I'm not. Welcome to the 1920s, age of the robber barons). Also, as slashdotters well know, they really don't want to cut down on a corporation's right to regulate Internet traffic (bye bye net neutrality).

    I'd tell you how much he's personally benefitted but he doesn't seem to be disposed to releasing his financial records. Still that hasn't kept some forensic analysis of what he has released from turning up some interesting things:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/business/in-romneys-tax-return-clues-in-foreign-taxes.html?ref=politics