Amazon Blames Social Media for Struggle With Fake Reviews (theguardian.com) 73
Amazon has blamed social media companies for its failure to remove fake reviews from its website, arguing that "bad actors" turn to social networks to buy and sell fake product reviews outside the reach of its own technology. From a report: The company says it removed more than 200m suspected fake reviews before they were seen by customers in 2020 alone, but nonetheless has faced continued criticism for the enormous scale of fake and misleading reviews that make it on to its store. This year a Which? investigation found companies claiming to be able to guarantee "Amazon's Choice" status on products -- an algorithmically assigned badge of quality that can push products to the top of search results -- within two weeks, and others claiming to have armies of reviewers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Amazon says the blame for those organisations should lie with social media companies, who it says are slow to act when warned that fake reviews are being solicited on their platforms.
Who knew? (Score:2)
No one could have seen that crowdsourcing your definition of "a good product" was going to be abused. Online spam and trolls were NEVER a thing before social media.
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simple.
the reason amazon does not construct a verification system is that amazon is to stupid to do it.
Re: Who knew? (Score:2)
Trolls have been around a while
https://youtu.be/_QyYaPWasos [youtu.be]
It's not our fault... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: It's not our fault... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but lately they have become inundated with a pitifully obvious shipping scam on variants. Someone will list a variant of, say, Cascade detergent as " !.1 pack" with a shipping cost of 50 bucks and hope people will not be paying attention. How hard is it to screen variants that start with punctuation from new sellers that also have high shipping? Utter, complete incompetence and indifference.
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Wait are you talking about Chinese counterfeiters or Amazon Choice ripping off products from smaller companies?
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yes
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Amazon is lying about this. They intentionally want fake reviews on their system.
The simplest proof of this how many listings they have where the PRODUCT is NEWER ("first appeared on Amazon") than the DATE of the REVIEWS beneath it.
The simple recycling of reviews from an old product to a newer one is the most obvious testament to the "BS" nature of their fake-review excuses.
Whose website is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because the Chinese counterfeiters want you to flog their product via social media (eg youtube, instagram, tiktok, twitch, facebook, etc)
Sadly, without the person being paid for the review receiving or even knowing how the product is made, people are too enticed by money and will often just accept things blindly. Apparently Instagram is a big source of fake product reviews.
Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You will find hundreds of instances where a product on sale is NOT the product that has been reviewed in the reviews (thousands of times in some cases). This is entirely under Amazon's control, and they refuse to fix it.
We already know that enforcement of the rules by Amazon is largely dependent on the amount of business revenue you generate, where large Chinese vendors have been impervious to any type of punishment.
Amazon, you're in the process of jumping the shark. You're starting to ignore the customers problems. What made you great (easy returns, quick shipping) is being eroded, and when I can no longer trust what I'm buying for you, I have every reason to stop by my local store and feel the new product in my hand before I purchase it.
Re:Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. I have reported to Amazon dozens of such listings with reviews for something totally different - guess what, none of them were taken down.
Re:Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are entire product categories on Amazon that can no longer be trusted: laptop batteries, battery cases for smartphones, and RC toys to name a few. It's all being gamed by cut-rate Chinese vendors to foist the same junk under a dozen different product names, and Amazon does absolutely nothing.
Well, that's not right ... they actually do one thing. If you post a review describing out how a Chinese vendor tried to pay you to give 5 stars for the junk they sold you, Amazon will promptly delete the review.
Re:Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, they do something. They whine that people are abusing their system, and it's just a few bad actors, then they make an example out of the largest, but least bad, just to show that they're serious.
Meanwhile the real problem is that there aren't enough human beings involved. When the description of a product changes by more than 10%, the review should be flagged for review by an actual human being. That can either be an actual Amazon employee or it can be a public review queue, where people sign up to review n changes per month in exchange for some tiny discount or something.
When products are combined, there should always be a human reviewing it. Just because two products kind of do similar things does not make it acceptable to combine the reviews. Two different colors of the same item are going to be the same in nearly every case, but two different models of an electronics product (apart from configuration differences like RAM or bundled accessories) are going to be radically different in behavior and features, and should never be combined. Yet I've seen utterly baffling combinations — TV sets of different sizes, HDMI splitters combined with HDMI switches, etc. Each of those should have been flagged for review by an actual human being unrelated to the seller, who would have immediately said, "Wait, what?" and rejected the change.
The core problem is that Amazon is trying to do through automation what should be done through crowdsourcing:
Third-party combining: There should be a way for me as an individual to take ten items by ten different vendors and say, "This appears to be the same item," and if a couple of review queue people agree with that assessment, then the vendors should have to submit documentation that proves that their item is different if they want it separated again, which should have to be reviewed by a human being. That alone would cut the noise by a factor of 1000x if I could search for switches and see one listing for a given model, rather than 1000 rebadgers selling the exact same switch under 1000 different names, mixed in with the other five models, three of which are also being sold by 1000 rebadgers.
Ban product deletions: It's okay to say that a product is no longer available and won't ever be. It's not okay for Amazon to serve 404 pages on a $5,000 video camera because of a critical review.
Bring back review comments: If I can't read the response from a vendor that explains how to do something that the person said was impossible, I can only take the review at face value. If I can't read the response from a random person that contradicts the glowing fake review, I can only take it at face value. And so on. When they removed the comments, Amazon reviews went from being useful to being very nearly worthless.
Expand Vine: Every product on the market should have the opportunity to be reviewed by a known-real person. More to the point, it should ideally be required. This means a multiple-order-of-magnitude increase in the size of that program.
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Third-party combining: There should be a way for me as an individual to take ten items by ten different vendors and say, "This appears to be the same item," and if a couple of review queue people agree with that assessment, then the vendors should have to submit documentation that proves that their item is different if they want it separated again, which should have to be reviewed by a human being. That alone would cut the noise by a factor of 1000x if I could search for switches and see one listing for a given model, rather than 1000 rebadgers selling the exact same switch under 1000 different names, mixed in with the other five models, three of which are also being sold by 1000 rebadgers.
The other side of that is comingling of counterfeit and real goods for the same ASIN. You buy a real item from a good vendor and you get a shoddy counterfeit from some other vendor because they are stored in the same warehouse bin.
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In a sane world those are all reasonable ideas.
We don't live in that world. I can tell you the outcome of your proposal. 100s maybe thousands of articles to the effect of "Amazon exploits army of gig workers!" and a congressional investigation.
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I really do not understand why Amazon does not include a string field on a review that they populate with the name of the item beign reviewed. That would make a lot of the reviews for other items" issue a lot more obvious. Couple that with a simple way to report a single review for being not applicable, and Amazon can offload 90% of the work to their customers.
Re:Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see. You OWN website, which you have completely 100% under your control, continues to allow bad actors to abuse it.
You will find hundreds of instances where a product on sale is NOT the product that has been reviewed in the reviews (thousands of times in some cases). This is entirely under Amazon's control, and they refuse to fix it.
We already know that enforcement of the rules by Amazon is largely dependent on the amount of business revenue you generate, where large Chinese vendors have been impervious to any type of punishment.
Amazon, you're in the process of jumping the shark. You're starting to ignore the customers problems. What made you great (easy returns, quick shipping) is being eroded, and when I can no longer trust what I'm buying for you, I have every reason to stop by my local store and feel the new product in my hand before I purchase it.
Simple enough to do. Only verified purchasers are permitted to post reviews. No-one who gets the product for free gets ranked (or at least marks the review as "got the product for free"). When a product is superseded, do not carry over the reviews from the last product. Above all else, the whole thing needs to be moderated.
Steam does it pretty well, whilst you're right that no system is 100% fool proof, they can be made secure enough to be useful to purchasers. In fact the thing I'd like Steam to do is list the version no. current when the review was made.
The thing is, Amazon doesn't want to take the time or cost to manage their review system, hence fake reviews are commonplace. So much so and it's been that way for so long that few people trust Amazon reviews now.
Re:Sorry Amazon.... (Score:5, Informative)
They already have a workaround for that one. You buy the product with your own money at full price, then post the 5-star review as a verified buyer. You are reimbursed the cost of your purchase by the vendor, who then allows you to keep or dispose of the product as you see fit. Most of it winds up on eBay.
The Amazon "Verified Purchase" system is completely broken. Perhaps there's a way to fix it, but Amazon clearly has no interest in finding a solution.
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The obvious answer is to crank the signal up so the scammers can't make enough noise. If Amazon encouraged everyone to review every purchase it would be pretty difficult for fake reviews to move the needles.
The trouble is you need some incentive, and even 1% off your next purchase could get pretty expensive. The thing to do would be offer a chance to win a $25 gift cert or something. Give out enough of them that most customers end up getting one at some point or at least have a friend of friend that did. I
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WRONG!
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Block based on purchases. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why doesn't amazon simply block you from writing a review unless they've recorded a sale of that specific device against your account? They are after all customer reviews are they not?
Re:Block based on purchases. (Score:4, Informative)
I once sat down and left reviews for all the items in my purchase history. Every single review was rejected. No explanation why. So I don't even bother trying anymore.
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I get requests from Amazon for reviews for items I just barely purchased. It's much too early for me to leave a sensible review since I haven't used the product yet and when I do it'll take me a while before I have an opinion. The only review that I can leave would say "yeah, the item showed up."
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There are fools who write reviews like that! "4 stars: I ordered this for my Grandson for Christmas" or "5 stars: My 3-year old was very excited to receive it" or "4.5 stars: This should look great in my home, I can't wait for it to arrive!" "100 people found this review helpful" Meanwhile my review is on page 250, with pictures of the product and a 3 paragraph review of the advantages and disadvantages of the item, and nobody ever sees it.
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Last year I received 2 packages from Amazon that I didn't order: one contained a sheet of Teflon, and another had some pieces that looked like strange plumbing parts. I reported it to Amazon but got no reply. It was difficult because I can only report something on my account if it is tied to an order on my account, and I didn't have one. So even when their customers have the information required to track down the schemes, Amazon makes it hard to communicate with them.
Re:Block based on purchases. (Score:5, Informative)
They have work arounds for that. I was offered a deal where if I buy a product and left a review, they would refund me the cost of the product via paypal.
Re:Block based on purchases. (Score:5, Insightful)
And, of course, brushing scams. Amazon is such a data driven company it seems hard to believe that they couldn't flag and cut down on those, but maybe they're too busy crunching the analytics on warehouse workers' bathroom breaks to do something about the integrity of their review system. And after all, what's the harm if you're taken in by a fake review? You buy something and Amazon gets a cut.
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Lets assume things had gone in another direction and I had accepted. How would Amazon be able to detect my paid ad vs one of my legit? I have many legit reviews both positive and negative on Amazon. Whenever there is money involved, people will find a workaround.
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I was talking about brushing scams. Payola is a different matter.
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Or they can sell it for a really low price at first in order to gain momentum with some good reviews ("it barely works but there's nothing better for the price! 5 stars!") and later raise the price to a profitable level while keeping all the old reviews.
If you're going to let sellers raise their prices, you need to do something about those reviews that were heavily dependent on the price of the item.
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Why doesn't amazon simply block you from writing a review unless they've recorded a sale of that specific device against your account? They are after all customer reviews are they not?
In the long, long ago, I would often review things that I had purchased elsewhere on sites like Amazon if I felt the product merited it (positively or negatively). The last time I did this was about 15 years ago, so, grain of salt, but there was justification when they weren't the 800 lb gorilla they are now.
But I join everyone here in saying that this is pure BS and the argument Amazon makes makes no sense to me.
Re:Block based on purchases. (Score:5, Interesting)
They already do that - the reviews where you have bought the item are marked and count more. But there are groups on social media where they are given a product to buy from Amazon and then the seller sends them the money via Paypal.
The problem is that Amazon does not care, as it would not be that hard of a data science project to figure out these groups. In fact, back when I was a top-500 reviewer, I bought and reviewed some of the best rated & best selling binoculars [ecuadors.net] and left honest expert reviews on them and these groups ganged up and downvoted my reviews (there was a downvote button back then). It was dozens of downvotes in the span of a day, dropped me below top-1000 reviewers, it would have been obvious to any system Amazon would have to monitor abuse. But that's not all, I got an email from a person who was part of one of those review groups, who sent me screenshots of the group where the seller asked their followers to go and downvote me and this guy said I'm all for free stuff but I wanted to tell you cause that's not right. So I sent Amazon the screenshots. They did nothing, those crappy top rated binoculars stayed up with my honest reviews downvoted (and my general reviewer rating lowered).
I buy from Amazon all the time, it's very convenient with prime shipping, but if I want something that is not a known thing/brand etc, I can't trust any of the reviews.
Zero Trust in Manipulated Reviews (Score:1)
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Southpark showed restaurants how to deal with Yelp reviewers.
It sure put me off ever mentioning I might be likely to leave a review for anyplace I go.
Regarding dodgy products and fake positive reviews though
Doesn't Amazon require that any product being sold is sold by someone who has full authenticated ID? If not, they certainly should do so - so that if they are selling illegal knockoffs, or products that turn out to be dangerous and cause injuries or other problems, the police know exactly who's door to g
Stop using Amazon (Score:2, Troll)
It's not difficult. Shop locally, or if that doesn't work, use any number of vendors who are not part of Amazon's system.
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I agree, I'll just run down to my local Radio Shack, uh Fry's and...
#Nevermind
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"mail?" what's this thing you call "mail?"
Ah, you must mean the old Sears & Roebuck Catalog [history.com] then?
Funny that, you strike me as somebody who'd use more modern, voice-activated merchandise acquisition.
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Nothing is real anymore (Score:4, Interesting)
Everything in the digital realm is a deep fake. Get used to it.
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So you're fake too?
How some of the scams work... (Score:4, Informative)
I've purchased a few items off of Amazon. I've left a few good reviews and some bad ones. After I had left a review for some random product I bought, I got an email... "Thanks for the good review, we'll buy the product for you." I thought, cool. They paid me for my honest good review.
Two months later I got an email. "Hey, We'll give you this free product if you give us a good review." I purchased the item, used it for a few days, left a good review. They reimbursed me. They now send me these deals every time their "marketing company" gets a new product to push. They pay me via paypal.
In my case, all of the reviews I left were honest, but the scams seem clear. I know this is a violation of the Amazon TOS, but hey, I got free stuff and didn't lie about it.
The reality though is that with this type of system, the reviews will always be biased. It would be fairly difficult for Amazon to figure out this was happening as they don't yet own slashdot, and I leave plenty of good reviews for legit products that don't give me free stuff. Try to find me in that noise Amazon AI!
It is because of this that I never believe the good reviews when I see them. I now assume the first 40 good reviews are from folks like me.
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Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town. - George Carlin
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Yes. I thought I made that clear.
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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times. - Huston Smith
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this is a violation of the Amazon TOS...and didn't lie about it.
Those two comments are contradictory. First off, you were "paid" for a review and didn't disclose it. And the agreement is that you had to leave a positive review or you wouldn't get compensated for it. Ergo you DID lie about it.
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Well, not to Amazon, cuz I've never talked to them about it. I mean... Is it a lie if I just never mention it? Plus, they don't have a form to turn myself in.
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Sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie - it's to make people fear the liar. - Anne Applebaum
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] "Lying by omission, also known as a continuing misrepresentation or quote mining, occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes the failure to correct pre-existing misconceptions. For example, when the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly, but does not mention that a fault was reported during the last service, the seller lies by omission. It may be compared to dissimulation. An omission is when a
Those darn social networks let people talk! (Score:3, Interesting)
If it weren't for social networks, people wouldn't be able to communicate and be able to do this!
Someone, please hurry up and stop communication, before people wake up and realize some common sense that everybody knew before Amazon (and "app stores")), which is that stores and reviews should never be together.
(Why? Because 100% of the time, it's a conflict-of-interest. You don't buy cars from Consumer Reports, just like you don't ask a car dealer for their review of the car they're selling you.)
Separating doesn't help (Score:2)
While that's true, separating reviews from sales is no guarantee of quality or fairness. Just look at the dumpster fire that is Yelp. Or even Rotten Tomatoes, in which user reviews are frequently gamed by people with an axe to grind (at least they smartened up a bit and stop accepting reviews before the movies actually opened).
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So, the "movie critics" who go with whatever the studio tells them?
This year a Which? investigation found (Score:2)
"This year a Which? investigation found"
Gotta love the quality of the articles - someone left a personal or editor's note in the text and hit publish. Well done.
no need of a social network... (Score:2)
There is no need of a social network, because the vendors themselves are gaming the system. When you are looking for a roll of duct tape you are likely to find a five-star rating, only its for a toaster. The vendor is betting your not really going to read the five-star ratings but rather just look at how many of them are there. The only ones worth reading are 1 or 2 star to find out what can go wrong.
Then on top of that the vendors will offer free-this-or-that for a five star rating. Nothing like direct pay
The REAL problem (Score:3)
So the REAL problem is that these "bad actors" aren't using the Amazon marketplace to buy and sell fake product reviews. That way, at least Amazon gets a cut.
Newsflash (Score:2)
While I despise the as---ats that do that. (Score:2)
Or, to put it another way ... (Score:3)
Ho hum (Score:2)
On the one hand, Amazon is probably correct that Social Media sites love fake review scams because it draws in users and advertising for them. On the other hand, they created a really bad review system and my sympathy for them over zero day exploits they never fix is limited.
I won't point out the fallacies involved in modern Slashdotters pointing out that other sites don't deal with complaints about abuse because I want to game the system and get a few karma points I don't really need.
Step one is to only let actual purchasers review. (Score:1)
Amazon has other issues (Score:2)
It's always possible many of these fake reviews were on these products, pushed by the manufacturers who could make a quick buck then leave Amazon to foot the bill of paying people for their damages.
plastic bottles, jay-walking (Score:2)
Hotel Reviews (Score:2)
Money influencing posted opinions (Score:2)
With No Zero-Star Rating, They Are All Fake (Score:2)