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Why You Shouldn't Trust Internet Comments
sciencehabit writes "A new study suggests that all the reviews you read on Yelp and Amazon are easily manipulated. It's not that companies are stacking the deck, necessarily, it's that a few positive comments early on can influence future commenters. In fact, when researchers gamed the system on a real news aggregation site, the items received fake positive votes from the researchers were 32% more likely to receive more positive votes compared with a control (abstract). And those comments were no more likely than the control to be down-voted by the next viewer to see them. By the end of the study, positively manipulated comments got an overall boost of about 25%. However, the same did not hold true for negative manipulation. The ratings of comments that got a fake down vote were usually negated by an up vote by the next user to see them."
This comment is IMMENSELY trustworthy!
What an excellent report. I read this to my Son and he loved it, would recommend to anyone and definitely read again. 5*
I've been here for over a decade and I STILL have yet to see Natalie Portman naked and petrified, despite all the hype.
Also, I miss OOG The Caveman.
is the best slashdot thread we've seen all week! I love it!
What's interesting about the study is:
1) The manipulation was a single positive or negative vote applied at random immediately when the article went live.
2) People would tend to correct false negatives, but amplify false positives.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I trust the article that there may be subtle changes in future comments due to past comments. However, there is still a very valid difference between a 5-star item with 2,000 comments and a 1-star item with three or four comments, and that is good enough for me.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
My hypothesis:
1) Products with positive comments are more likely to be purchased.
2) People identify themselves by their choices, and no one wants to make a bad choice. Ergo, almost by definition, any choice people make is "the right one". At the very least, people are predisposed to liking what they spent money on.
Remember; When discussing all things retail, it's not how good the product is, but how well it satisfied the need. At least half the time, that need is largely imaginary.
Sure, I could RTFA, but this is more fun.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I'd say it's far more complicated then that.
If you have a bad experience and go to the product review and the other reviews are bad, you are apt to write a review confirming what you are reading.
On the other hand if you have a bad experience and all the other product reviews are good you may have a moment of self doubt (did I mess up with the product) which makes you less willing to post a negative review.
When I check reviews, one of the first things I do is check the negative reviews. Why? Because half the one-stars are often jackasses with no clue what product and/or service they were buying. Other times, knowledgable and otherwise reasonable people have found the service or product being rated to be inadequate in some significant way.
And then I look for high ratings to see if they are reviewing the product in a reasonable manner. From there, I make my own decisions regarding the validity of both sides.
Anyone who decides just based on the stars/review-based numbers is a fool.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
My wife has posted negative reviews on a certain vendor's website (from real product experience, not trolling) when a product she bought was unsatisfactory.
This elicited an immediate email from customer service offering various deals to bribe/entice her to change or withdraw the review. Companies are free to do what they wish on their website but that still struck me as disingenuous.
But how much less likely are you to down-mod a score-5 tweet than a score-1? And how much more likely are you to read-and-upvote a red firehose submission than an indigo?
I'll leave positive comments, normally when I receive outstanding customer service. People should be recognized when they do good work, and far too often management doesn't bother unless they have input from outside. I'll also ask to speak to their supervisor if the situation warrants it, and let them know if someone has done something outstanding.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Or maybe they just weren't visible to the moderators until a few upvotes brought them above the viewing threshold. Once visible, comments that happen to be genuinely insightful, informative etc, would get more upvotes because they deserve it. You don't have to invoke bandwagon effects to describe what you observe. Also, when I have moderator points, I tend to upvote good comments that *don't* have a high score because they are worth drawing attention to. Wasting moderator points on a "me too" upvote of a +5 comment is a poor use of the privilege. In my view, the purpose of moderation isn't to "skew" the discussion to reinforce the echo chamber., Rather moderation should improve the overall signal/noise ratio so threshold settings are actually meaningful.
This is very true....and that is before you even get to the other question... even if they are not lieing, how do you know they are really a good commentor? Now, at this point, as we have had several blender's burn out, my wife is familiar with several of the models on the market. I honestly doubt there are too many other devices that we are as familiar with across different brands/models.
So what if you think this is the greatest cordless drill ever and the battery just goes forever. How do I know you are not basing that on a comparison with some cheap crap drill you bought in the mid 90s with a battery that shit the bed after a handful of recharges?
Not only that but, its rare that someone goes back and re-evalutes the product later. I have seen it...I have totally seen amazon reviews that said one thing, then had an edit explaining "Now that I have been using it for 6 months some issues have cropped up..."
Even less likely is that they get the product and use it before they up or downvote the comment. So really the only question on comment ratings is not really about accuracy but about whether it helped you decide to buy or not.
I generally look for posts of substance, that seem to actually have knowledge of what a product does and how it should work... but that are not so in depth as to look professionally writen, or by commenters that comment on 6 items a day (seriously, you really think I think you could possibly buy and evaluate that much crap?)
Also I find looking for the mid range star ratings is best. I generally skip right over the 5 star ratings for some 3 and 4 stars first, to get a feel for whats wrong with it. Often the features are less important than the defects, and its more about picking which defects I can live with than which features are best.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"