
Amazon ‘flooded by fake five-star reviews’ – report - drugme
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47941181
======
matthewfcarlson
My issue with Amazon reviews is the ease that sellers are able to change the
product and keep the reviews. I recently tried to buy a decent pair of USB C
headphones. The top two recommended products both had 5 starts with hundreds
of verified reviews... for a dvd copy of a classic movie. I've decided I just
can't trust Amazon reviews anymore.

~~~
gordon_freeman
This always happens with various editions of books too especially for classic
books. For example: I want to buy Meditations by Marcus Aurelius but there are
so many editions of that book with different authors who translated these
books but you'd see the same exact reviews on all of these editions. It is
very hard for me in that case to choose the right book.

~~~
DantesKite
I know what you mean. It took me a while to find the original version of
Napoleon Hill's "How to Think and Grow Rich" because everyone and their
mother's posted $0.99 versions.

That's why I like Standard Ebooks. It's a website where volunteers transcribe
public domain books into high-quality books for various eReaders. A lot of
ebooks tends to suffer from poor formatting and grammar issues, but all the
books on Standard Ebooks go through a rigorous proofreading process.

The book covers are quite lovely too.

I really like it.

[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/)

~~~
gordon_freeman
This site looks good. Thanks for sharing.

------
mmanfrin
A couple months ago, I googled 'whiteboard amazon', clicked the first result,
and was taken to a well structured amazon page for a whiteboard that had 5
stars. Looking at it a little closer, I noticed that of the 143 reviews, 143
were 5 star reviews. On top of it, every review followed a similar structure,
was made by an account that had thousands of 5 star reviews, and was so beyond
the pale obvious fraudulent that I felt the need to email jeff@amazon.

Today I was looking at some vitamins, and I checked every single result for a
certain supplement that was 4 or 5 stars and every single one of them ranked D
or worse on FakeSpot.

How the fuck does Amazon not know how to deal with this? 100% of reviews
coming in for a product on the same day? MAYBE THAT'S A SIGN, AMAZON.

Amazon reviews are worse than garbage now.

~~~
_jal
> How the fuck does Amazon not know how to deal with this?

How do you know they don't, and have via whatever mechanism decided that they
make more money if they choose not to?

~~~
c2h5oh
They are trying and failing - my wife is a seller and easily 20-30% of
completely valid positive reviews from repeat customers disappear without a
trace.. at the same time a racist tyrade of a review from a buyer who has
swastika as user avatar is impossible to get rid of ( 5 or 6 tries so far)

~~~
ccozan
reading this, feels like ebay is a really nice place to sell stuff.

They might have their own issues, but feels more authentic.

~~~
educationdata
Really? I feel selling stuff on ebay has a 1/5 chance get scammed.

~~~
manmal
I don’t know what categories you shop there, but I have never been scammed.
Often make sure to contact the seller beforehand though.

~~~
muzika
It’s easy to get scammed SELLING on eBay. Buying is not much if a problem as
you can get a refund easily as a buyer.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I sell a huge amount of stuff on eBay (retro computing / gaming items) and
have found it to be a really fantastic and friendly community. Perhaps it
depends on the items being sold?

~~~
rchaud
Probably. You are selling in a niche that scammers likely don't care about. If
you were selling a Macbook or iPhone, there'd probably be a lot of shady
buyers.

I've bought a ton of stuff on Ebay, but only ever sold a laptop when I wasn't
getting any bites on Craigslist. It was a limited-edition Dell laptop, so the
buyer was really enthusiastic about it and you could tell he was a normal
person and not a scammer.

Fortunately I live in a big city now and have never had issues selling in
person via CL/Kijiji.

------
notacoward
It's not just the fake reviews that bug me. I can use fakespot to weed through
a few of those. The thing that has really made Amazon less usable for me in
the last year or so is seeing the exact same product twenty times under
different nonsense-word brands. Recalling a recent example, in about a minute
I can find the exact same pair of water shoes sold as: gracosy, MAYZERO,
LINGTOM, Wonesion, JointlyCreating, Centipede Demon, hiitave, and more.
Another one is Belilent, Alibress, SUOKENI, Zhuanglin, Dreamcity, and so on.
Same pictures, almost same descriptive text, with only minor cosmetic
differences.

Are these different companies that happen to use the same supplier? It's
possible, but it could also be one company creating multiple pseudo-brands to
game the system. I could probably even find out, but _I don 't care_. The same
physical thing shipped for the same price from the same Chinese factory
shouldn't show up twenty times. As long as search results are filled with
crap, they're useless. It's the combination of fake reviews _and_ this kind of
flooding that makes me want to leave and never come back.

~~~
asdff
The store is an absolute mess, even with major brands. The exact same pair of
Nikes could be listed in a half dozen separate categories sold by two dozen
different sellers at shipping speeds ranging from two hours to two months and
prices ranging from $0.06 - $649.58.

You end up having to spend 10x the amount of time down the rabbit hole of
different categories, vaguely different product titles, different sizes ("size
10", "size TEN" "10(m)", etc.), and different names for the same color shoe,
all to desperately find that low price/size/color combination that drew you in
from the search results in the first place.

The store _desperately_ needs moderation to tidy it up. I'm sure the devs are
patting themselves on the back for all the extra engagement they are milking
out of me, but frankly I'm using the site less and less to the point where
I've cancelled my prime membership. The only thing keeping me is milking their
free shipping and 3% back card, and only if local alternatives fail me.

~~~
m0nty
I let my Prime lapse this year, for similar reasons. Gone are the days when
Amazon tended to have medium- to high-quality items. Now it's a 50/50 chance I
will get some cheap tat which has been expertly misrepresented by the seller
(i.e. photos which make the product look bigger than it is).

I don't miss Prime and I'm not buying much from Amazon and this is fine.

------
burlesona
I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but at some point in the last year
or so I completely lost trust in purchasing goods on Amazon.

I’ve been a Prime customer since Prime launched. I loved it for a decade. It
used to be an automatic reflex for me: need something? Type it in Amazon and
click buy.

But now I don’t trust Amazon search results at all, and when I do purchase I
only do it via direct product links from other sites I trust (like Wirecutter
or the manufacturer’s site). Increasingly I buy direct from the brands
websites.

I wanted to drop Prime this year. My wife argued we should keep it because the
kids watch a lot of Prime Video. But we’ve already got Netflix, and with
Disney launching their thing I think I’d rather buy that than stick with Prime
any longer.

Not sure where Amazon is headed, and I wish the fate of AWS and Whole Foods
weren’t at least somewhat tied up in the fate of Amazon’s retail operation.

~~~
Theodores
Find Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube and his reviews of the locks Amazon
recommend. See him open them in seconds. Share videos with wife. She will be
with you on cutting the umbilical cord to Amazon after that.

The locks they recommend in 'Amazon Choice' have known vulnerabilities that
design solutions were found for many decades ago so the products are
essentially naive. If Amazon deliberately set out to hype the most useless
locks so you would have your stuff stolen (and have to buy more from Amazon)
then they would struggle to do a better job.

Of course the locks come with hundreds of five star reviews even though they
can be opened in seconds with low skill attacks.

~~~
nyolfen
to be fair he opens almost every lock in seconds

~~~
astura
The point is that the "Amazon Choice" lock is a cheaply made Chinese knockoff
of another (much better) lock.

[https://youtu.be/eOJc9OiRN5A](https://youtu.be/eOJc9OiRN5A)

------
cptskippy
I received an email at least once a month, to an address I used exclusively
for Amazon purchases, inviting me to join a website that will reimburse me via
PayPal if I purchase products and review them.

I have forwarded the emails to Amazon a couple times explaining that my email
address is used exclusively for them making it easier to narrow down who might
be sending these emails. They always respond with a warning that my account
might be suspended if I partake in such sites.

~~~
luckylion
Same here. Cryptic alias on my own domain that I never use for anything else.
It's rare though, I get one spam email to that address once every few months
now, and it's always shopping/review-related. I've contacted Amazon to ask
how, when and with whom they shared my email address and their response was
basically "we don't ever, but here's a month of free prime for your trouble".

~~~
cptskippy
I wonder what you're saying that I'm not, I never managed to unlock a free
month of prime.

------
tasty_freeze
I wish I kept a link, but there was looking to buy a book on music theory or
something similar. One of the books had 13 or so reviews, all glowing. Many
were of the form "Exactly what I was looking for!" or "Just perfect!" with
nothing more.

Two of them had the same surprising word that made no sense in the context of
the sentence: both reviews used the word "goal." Then it hit me: either the
directions telling them what to review or in their own attempt to translate to
English, the auto-translation picked the wrong synonym, choosing "goal"
instead of "score."

~~~
wallace_f
Yea, and spurious reviews are egregious on other markets such as booking.com,
etc.

Booking sites dont just use fake reviews, but also hide or even delete bad
reviews. I've personally seen this because I travel a lot.

As much as I dislike Google, they act as a neutral third-party for hosting
hotel and restaurant reviews. Amazon howrver wants good reviews on products to
make sales.

------
maxxxxx
I never thought it would get that way but I feel more comfortable now buying
from ebay from a seller with good feedback. Amazon is such a cesspool of weird
sellers. For example I looked for flashes of Godox brand. Listings had "Godox"
in the title but when I looked at the listings they were all from different
sellers and not from Godox. I think is intentionally misleading by Amazon. As
a tech person I sort of understand what's going on but a lot of people trust
Amazon and don't understand that Amazon isn't really the seller and does
nothing against sleazy listings.

------
sundayedition
One product (power bricks for MacBooks) had over 1000 5 stars, then the 1 star
reviews came in where people actually had their power adapters catch on fire.
Amazon, or maybe the seller, shut the review/product down. Now, it's back:

[https://www.amazon.com/KUPPET-MacBook-17inch-Compatible-
MacB...](https://www.amazon.com/KUPPET-MacBook-17inch-Compatible-MacBooks-
Produced/dp/B07P56DJLV/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Kuppet+macbook&qid=1555375810&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull)

Lots of verified purchases. All the reviews are within the same date range. It
doesn't take machine learning or advanced AI to catch this; a simple SQL
statement should be enough to flag these. But still, they persist.

~~~
harry8
Ergo, Amazon cannot do Stats/ML/AI/call it what you will. The claims that they
have an AI advantage don't pass the sniff test.

~~~
sytelus
It's not ML/AI problem. The problem is that Amazon wasn't able to punish
counterfeiters financially or legally which in turn may be because they don't
have a process to ensure seller identity that is legally traceable. This is
equivalent to someone coming to BestBuy, sell to them bunch of fake products
and get away with it without a scratch every single time. You wouldn't blame
that BestBuy doesn't have AI system, would you?

~~~
shrikant
It doesn't actually what the nature of the problem domain itself is, in this
case -- you can't solve a problem that you don't want to.

------
l8nite
I've started using fakespot.com for every purchase from Amazon, has saved me
from making a bad purchase more than once.

~~~
anitil
Do they have a plugin? I feel like that would make life a lot easier - you
don't have to go to a second domain, just look at the listing and the plugin
puts a big "Don't Buy" banner over it

~~~
bruxis
There is a Chrome extension[0] available. I personally find FakeSpot best used
to help avoid bad buys -- not to ensure that buys are going to be good (due to
adversarial gaming, or FakeSpot itself being targeted).

[0]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-
analyze-f...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fakespot-analyze-fake-
ama/nakplnnackehceedgkgkokbgbmfghain)

------
ginger123
If you are buying electronics, buy it from Best Buy, Costco, Target, Walmart
or another retailer with a physical store. Best Buy matches Amazon's prices
and their merchandise is not fake.

~~~
russdill
B&H

~~~
imjk
I’ve had bad experiences with B&H. I purchased a $1k+ gimbal from them for an
upcoming project. I ordered it in advance so that I’d have some time to
practice using it. Unfortunately, I delayed using it for a few weeks and when
I finally opened the package, it was defective. When I reached them for a
refund, they said there was nothing they can do as I was outside the return
window. Based on my experiences with Amazon in the past I know I would have
had a much better experience if I ordered from them. Regardless, I no longer
trust B&H for buying expensive camera gear.

~~~
fmajid
I bought a Leica M10 ($$$$) from them, and discovered a defect about a week
after the return period expired. They took it back without a fuss.

------
gringoDan
Reply All did a great podcast in Amazon's recent drop in quality:
[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-
all/124)

Highly recommend.

------
adrian_mrd
I recently ordered a small device from Amazon, it was poor, so I gave it a 1
star rating with a short, negative review.

About a week later, I received an e-mail from the seller (via Amazon's
payments communication system) asking for me to delete my review in return for
being refunded the total amount, and stating that I could keep the device.

Whilst I didn't take up their offer, I assume many others did which shows how
Amazon is 'not flooded with one-star reviews'.

~~~
GordonS
I had exactly the same thing happen recently with a light bulb that wasn't
nearly as bright as advertised. Seller said they'd refund me, let me keep the
crappy bulb _and_ send me a brighter and more expensive bulb for free.

I didn't take them up on this, as it wouldn't be fair for future customers;
after all, I'd bought the crappy bulb because there were no bad reviews...

------
blibble
I no longer buy from Amazon: batteries, chargers, flash drives/SD cards, any
sort of food (or container for food)

essentially only stuff that's completely obvious if it's fake, or if it's too
expensive/niche to bother counterfeiting

~~~
AmVess
I've read articles of people getting fake HAND SOAP from Amazon. You know, the
less than $1/bar soap.

Fake laundry detergent is also a big one.

The fake bar soap has led me to believe that people will make counterfeits of
anything they can.

~~~
externalreality
You mean like knock-off dove? I mean, soap is pretty easy to make so unless
its a knock-off I don't see what you mean by fake.

------
52-6F-62
Is it possible there's a gulf between Amazon.com and Amazon.ca when it comes
to these issues?

Maybe it's just in what I shop for but I haven't received a single counterfeit
item, or come across fraudulent listings.

I've seen my fair share of imitation (and probably trademark-infringing)
products and cheap crap, but I try and avoid that stuff.

So my experience has largely been positive—but there's no shortage of horror
stories. That seems the norm around this board.

So I wonder is it just worse on the American side? (for reasons of volume or
targeted marketing or whatever)

~~~
colejohnson66
I’m in America and I too am confused at all the negative comments about
counterfeits. I’ve personally ordered hundreds of items from Amazon, but never
a counterfeit

~~~
rattlesnakedave
HN is legitimately the only place I’ve seen this complaint. I really wonder if
it’s HNs buying practices that are the problem.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Well I suppose this comment is HN too from your perspective, but I also
thought it was all HN until it happened to me. I was looking for Apple
earphones, and found Apple earphones, and ordered them and it all looked great
until they showed up, with a little cable tie in a clear plastic bag. And they
worked, but when I then ordered Apple earphones off the Apple Apple branded
Apple part of Amazon (which took a while to find and is covered in ads of
knockoff Apple) I ordered them at the much higher price of $29.99. They
arrived packaged in legit Apple trade dress, and I unfolded them from the
cardboard packaging which I then used for the first Apple-but-not-Apple-Apple
earphones. I first compared the two and sure enough they had minute
differences and the Apple-Apple earphones sounded better...hard to say why but
noticeably, and were louder at max volume, which is a difficult technical
accomplishment. And the mic and buttons worked properly. Plus that packaging
was as beautiful as Apple packaging has always been, I regarded it when it was
empty as a paper insect that could be pinned to framed insectologist
menagerie.

At any rate, I didn't lose much money and got more or less what I wanted,
but...

Acting as a basic Joe Consumer I can tell fakes from reals with nothing but a
browser, three minutes, and a simple checklist. Why can't Amazon which has a
fucking battalion of mercenary machine learning cyborgs do the same a trillion
times faster and cheaper and save me the (I can't believe I'm logging on to
Amazon to check how much I wasted...) $12.70 I blew buying from "CR Land"?

------
davidparks21
I reported 4 fake reviews to Amazon on a product I purchased before.

The product page had changed from the old one I originally purchased on to a
new one with 4 obviously fake 5-star reviews. I found this when I went to re-
purchase the product after it (an eBike) was stolen. The page is here
([https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2VLSX5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_He...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K2VLSX5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_HeDTCbV67NR82))

There is a review from me, calling out the fakes and providing detail, and the
other 4 that are clear-as-day fakes. The previous product page, which I
referenced in my report to Amazon, had numerous high quality, legit reviews
averaging around 3 stars with tons of detail.

Amazon has made no changes after my report.

------
twblalock
I use Amazon a lot but I won't buy expensive brand-name stuff there anymore.
Case in point: I am going to buy a Starrett combination square and Amazon has
a nice price with free shipping, but I'd bet there is a 50/50 chance I get a
counterfeit.

I'd also put your chances of getting a fake $9 Casio watch on Amazon at 50/50.

As a software engineer I kinda sympathize with Amazon -- no matter what system
you come up with, people are going to game it. It's a very complex moving
target and you will never be able to eradicate all of the scammers. At the
same time, I think they could do a lot better than they do today, and I wonder
if they actually try.

~~~
sytelus
Weeding out fake products is not a software or machine learning issue. It's a
_process_ issue and much simpler to solve. You require all your merchants to
provide their legally traceable identity. Your agreement should require
merchants to put payments on hold when fake product complaints are received
with arbitration fees. All big brick-and-mortar shops do this. It would be
very hard to introduce fake product in Fred Meyers or Costco by any merchant
without financial and potentially legal consequences. Amazon just needs
electronic version of that process.

~~~
twblalock
The trick is to implement such a process without the overhead the process has
at a place like Costco. Keep in mind that Amazon operates in many countries.

There is also significantly more incentive to fake a legal identity for
sellers at Amazon than at brick and mortar stores. Even if it costs a million
dollars it might still be worth doing -- you might make a lot more than that
by the time you get caught.

~~~
fmajid
The overhead is exactly what keeps the bad guys out. Without it, the spam and
counterfeit problem will continue. Amazon can't have its cake and eat it too.

------
d0m
When buying on Amazon, I'm mostly interested in the 2-4 range reviews; I find
this is where people discuss the pros/cons instead of just the pros (5 - best
product ever!1!) and just the worst (1 - it had a defect because I threw it in
the pool even though it said don't throw it in the pool and the company
doesn't want to reimburse me, never buying from it again yadayada - kind of
reviews).

~~~
jay_kyburz
Note to self: When writing fake reviews, just make them 4 stars.

~~~
novaleaf
but if you do that, you'll rank somewhere on page 4 or 5 of the listings.

------
dwighttk
"Online retail giant Amazon's website is flooded with fake five-star reviews
for products from brands it has never heard of, consumer group Which? has
claimed."

Took me about 5 times reading that to realize "it" referred to "consumer group
Which?"

I think the question mark in the name helped throw me off...

------
juskrey
I am always starting from bad reviews. Ironically, very often they are the
source of the information which makes me buy a product immediately.

E.g. if the book author is "arrogant", or most product problems are coming
from hysterical idiots with none of them due to the manufacturer.

~~~
ikeboy
Yes, I've heard this recommended as a strategy for sellers - leave yourself
negative reviews that are clearly not issues with the product.

~~~
juskrey
I believe this is pretty hard to fake realistically, plus it goes with the
necessity of significantly lowering your own product score, so..

~~~
ikeboy
Doesn't have to be significant, and it can be done by upvoting those reviews
so they rise to the top without leaving any reviews yourself (and I've heard
people talk about using this specific tactic). Conversely, I've heard people
complaining their competition left negative reviews and/or upvoted their bad
reviews to the top.

------
psadri
My theory is that amazon’s new business model is increasingly going to be
based on advertising.

Reliable reviews are incompatible with advertising revenue (why else would you
have to advertise heavily if your products are really the best).

The same observation may explain the doscountinuation of Amazon Button. Button
would reorder the same product/brand over and over again - not compatible with
advertising by competitors.

~~~
luckylion
Amazon is making money on all sides: ads, "amazon's choice", and when you buy
something that will break soon, you buy twice, and Amazon gets their
commission twice. So far, I don't see any incentive for them to change
anything.

------
dRaBoQ
What bothers more even more is the injection of sponsored ads that ignore not
just the keywords you search for, but even the filters like price.

I search for a brand name watch or camera with a price of 300$+ and half of
the results are no-name knockoff 25$ watches without even an easy visual way
to distinguish them. They just put a very faint "Sponsored" that you have to
squint hard to see it.

------
sadlion
I buy my supplements like vitamins, protein bars and powder from Amazon. The
stock mingling and counterfeits is worrying me now. Should I switch to local
shops or am i being too paranoid? For non edibles, with all the fake review
sites out there, are sites like the wirecutter and consumer report still trust
worthy?

~~~
masonic
I bought Schiff's sleep aid from Amazon, and when I compared the bottle with a
Costco-purchased one, there were clear differences and an overlaid UPC label.

~~~
sadlion
The overlaid label is suspicious. It reminds me of the whole Chinese baby
formula crisis. Amazon needs to add rigorous control before someone gets
severely ill or even dies. It looks like a giant liability for legitimate
sellers and Amazon itself to me.

------
technofiend
My cynical nature assumes some Amazon MBA has done the math and concluded that
the gain in revenue from Amazon-only brands will exceed that lost from people
abandoning the rest. This is based on the _assumption_ that Amazon's Fulfilled
By Amazon cobranding program does not allow third party participation for
Amazon's in-house brands like Amazon Basic.

In light of that admittedly negative view what's Amazon's motivation to limit
fake reviews since it doesn't damage their own brands, albeit at the cost of
damaging their brand as a whole.

~~~
tracker1
At this point, I trust the Amazon brands less than the knockoffs. Half of the
amazon labelled products I've used didn't work well or very long.

~~~
technofiend
Really? My experience has been universally positive so far. To be fair to
Amazon and maybe I've just drunk too much SV koolaid but I assume there are
some very smart people actually working on the two related problems:
validating both reviewers and supply-chain members to reduce fraud. It just
remains to be seen how they solve the problem.

------
steve19
How about simply filtering amazon reviews that are only left by people with a
wide variety of expenditure and who spend over $500/year?

~~~
russdill
Even if you add the ability to filter, it won't help unless it's the default.
You'll still have a huge number of buyers choosing the product due to fake
reviews and driving up the sales numbers. Since they aren't the smartest
shoppers, they're also likely to leave their own review and be influenced by
the other 5 star reviews.

------
jerkstate
The only reviews worth reading on any site are 1 and 2-star reviews. I
honestly don’t care if someone is happy with a product, I want to know what
the problems might happen or what situations it doesn’t work for.

I recently paid for a Consumer Reports digital subscription to get reviews for
appliances and it’s been worth every penny of the very reasonable $35 annual
subscription.

~~~
int_19h
I disagree. Most 5-star reviews are garbage, but sometimes you find one that
goes into great detail about real-world device specs from their own
measurements, and even disassemble them and note various upsides and downsides
of the design.

And conversely, many 1- and 2-star reviews are also garbage - the most common
case is when the reviewer complains about item not being delivered or
delivered late, or not what they wanted due to some misunderstanding.

What's really needed IMO is some kind of reputation for reviewers, that is
easy to track.

------
wetpaws
This is my go to tool when dealing with Amazon reviews:
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

99% of products feature a least some of fake 5 stars. Only very good brands
don't rely on them, I usually buy from them even if they have 4-star rating.

------
Pxtl
I would pay substantially more than Amazon prices for a store that actually
curated their inventory to offer quality stuff instead of a firehose of
algorithmically-reviewed trash.

I shop at Amazon only for the selection, not the experience. Not even for the
price.

~~~
andrewxhill
If you can handle a fraction of the inventory, you can use a trusted reviewer
like [https://thewirecutter.com/](https://thewirecutter.com/)

------
fmajid
They are trying to fix the problem, but the number of scammers dwarfs the
number of Amazon employees: [https://blog.dshr.org/2019/04/what-is-
amazon.html](https://blog.dshr.org/2019/04/what-is-amazon.html)

That said, Amazon could buy Fakespot or one of its competitors with small
change from Jeff Bezos' sofa, and they are clearly doing a better job than
Amazon at rooting out fraudulent reviews.

Ironically, Amazon's enforcement was turned against them. Unscrupulous
merchants are planting obviously fake five-star reviews on their competitors.
Amazon then takes down the framed competitor. Genius!

~~~
luckylion
> They are trying to fix the problem

doubt. Amazon has unlimited data on everything, they could fix that if they
wanted to. They just have zero incentive to: the sales happen on Amazon's
platform, a lot of them use FBA, so Amazon is getting paid.

------
nelzya
Not only fake positive reviews, amazon postings are saturated with fake
negative reviews and counterfeit and knock-off products (95% of cheap
electronics). But it's not an amazon problem, it's a customer problem. Amazon
monopolized online market and destroyed other sellers. If they bring order it
would lead to honest prices for honest products and would allow other sellers
back to the market. Why should amazon do so? It's better for them to forfeit
this market than give up a share of it.

------
makecheck
Star-based reviews basically need to go away. There just isn’t any reasonable
way to process the information contained in the rating itself. I know that I
_always_ think twice about a purchase when there are mediocre reviews, despite
knowing all the ways that the reviews could be basically outright lies,
because I know I don’t plan to spend all the time it would require to actually
discern real from fake.

I was thinking about how even simplified systems like thumbs-up/thumbs-down
for music don’t make sense either. In my car, there is a great way that they
could _infer_ what I like: how long is it playing? I essentially will let at
least half a song keep playing if I like it, whereas I will quickly flip away
from one I don’t want. I am _more_ likely to flip to the next song than click
a thumbs-down, especially while driving. “Time actually played”, perhaps as a
percentage of total song length, would probably be a great way to
automatically rank my music for me.

And I think it would work for Amazon and other systems too. For example, if a
product was purchased and never returned, maybe it doesn’t suck. If it’s a
consumable item that was purchased again, maybe it doesn’t suck. We don’t need
reviews and star ratings to figure this kind of thing out, and it’s extremely
hard to fake.

------
bkraz
I once wrote an Amazon review in which I said that the other reviews followed
a pattern of manipulation. Amazon deleted my review, and sent me a warning
letter :
[https://twitter.com/BenKrasnow/status/1106385729435787264?s=...](https://twitter.com/BenKrasnow/status/1106385729435787264?s=19)

~~~
delecti
I'm with Amazon on this one. Reviews are for the product, not to side-talk
other reviews. Report the other reviews if there's a problem. Of course they
probably aren't likely to do anything even then, but cross chatter between
reviews is not a trend they'd want to allow either.

------
gigatexal
I trust the verified reviewers especially those that post pictures of the
item. For example if I am buying a computer case and someone posts a review
with the case and their system inside and they say the airflow is good and the
build experience is great too then that adds a lot more weight than 100 five
star reviews.

------
topicseed
Oh, and the keyword stuffing is horribly obvious and Amazon's antispam team
should get in touch with Google's. These product pages should be flagged for
keyword stuffing, suspended until fixed and permanently banned for repeat
offenders.

It's horrible and extremely user-unfriendly.

------
rchaud
When I first heard of sites like JD.com and Alibaba, I visited out of
curiosity and noped out fast. The UX was horrible, the sites were a jumbled
mess, and I'd see the same product marked up at different prices, and a bunch
of fake-seeming reviews. "Thank God we have Amazon here", I thought.

Tried searching for bluetooth headphones on Amazon Canada (which has a much
smaller selection than the US site). It was almost exactly as I remember the
old Chinese ecommerce site. Wall-to-wall rows of indistinguishable products,
500+ 5 star reviews for each, many of which are obviously for other products.

Lately, the Prime app hasn't even been working on my PS3, so it might be time
to start moving back to brick and mortar for my purchases.

------
mef
lots of examples of fake reviews on goods that show up in common search
results:

e.g. [https://www.amazon.ca/Bluetooth-Headphones-Sweatproof-
Compat...](https://www.amazon.ca/Bluetooth-Headphones-Sweatproof-Compatible-
Smartphones/dp/B07PG3QXBP/)

clicking through on a reviewer shows, for example, an account with 82 5-star
reviews, all posted today, April 15th:

[https://www.amazon.ca/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFZWITCLSKYQH...](https://www.amazon.ca/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFZWITCLSKYQHSYAVPNXTZZH2FMQ/)

Seems like posting 82 5-star reviews in a single day should probably trigger
some sort of anti-fraud mechanism?

------
tlrobinson
Why even bother allowing unverified purchase reviews?

~~~
rlayton2
I think there can be lots of value in them, but only in the long-form review,
where the product is described and evaluated. Aggregating the numbers makes no
sense.

------
crankylinuxuser
News at 11.

Seriously? Go hang out at Amazon for a hot second. You'll see:

    
    
         1. Fraudulent products
         2. Fake products
         3. Ripoff obvious clones
         4. Fake stores
         5. Fake reviews (5 star AND good 1 star like the bot got mixed up)
         6. Bad of the above mixed in the supply of the "good" legit products
         7. Amazon Piss bottles (0)
    

Amazon is now, what Walmart was 10 years ago - a scourge and a horror to work
at for any length of time. It's no surprise that a company that was to sell
off even more underlying ethics would be walmart at their own game.(1) In
that, Walmart only has the upper hand because of local stores...

(0) [https://nypost.com/2018/04/16/amazon-warehouse-workers-
pee-i...](https://nypost.com/2018/04/16/amazon-warehouse-workers-pee-into-
bottles-to-avoid-wasting-time-undercover-investigator/)

(1) [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

~~~
int_19h
You forgot another category: products that are outright illegal. For example,
"oil filters" that are basically silencers, or Glock full auto conversion
parts.

[https://smile.amazon.com/JINJULI-Tactical-Semi-Automatic-
Cov...](https://smile.amazon.com/JINJULI-Tactical-Semi-Automatic-Cover-
Plate/dp/B07Q146R99) (google "Glock FSSG" to see what this actually is)

[https://smile.amazon.com/Filter-Aluminum-24003-Durable-
Const...](https://smile.amazon.com/Filter-Aluminum-24003-Durable-
Construction/dp/B079KT7NWZ/) (note the reviews and questions on this one)

Now, to Amazon's credit, when you report these, they do take the ones that are
unambiguously illegal down. The problem is that they get re-posted under a
slightly different title within a few hours.

~~~
groby_b
"will this make a .223 lawn mower engine quieter"

O_o

~~~
int_19h
To clarify, 1/2"x28 is the standard thread pitch used on most .22 and 9mm
caliber firearms for muzzle attachments. In most cases it's a flash hider or a
recoil compensator, but suppressors can attach in the same way.

Also, this one is an example of an "ambiguously legal" listing. The thing is,
after all, an actual oil filter, albeit a poorly made one. Owning it alongside
with a firearm it can attach to would likely constitute constructive
possession of an unregistered NFA item, but that's buyer's problem. Although I
would imagine the seller can still be sued if it can be proven that they knew
how most of their customers are using them (which is evident from reviews),
and intentionally designed them for that purpose. But, well, good luck suing a
noname Chinese merchant.

------
innocentoldguy
After receiving fake items a few times, I just stopped buying from Amazon
altogether. Especially now that Amazon collects taxes for my state, it is just
easier to go to a brick and mortar store and buy legitimate products in
person.

------
topicseed
Amazon reviews are a huge issue and a huge let down from the platform. I love
shopping on Amazon but today, I rarely do it due to 1) not believe any review
2) seeing the same product branded twenty times.

Various teams at Amazon need to do a rewrite of the entire reviews specs and
treat them like CC details. It's totally abnormal to find reviews about
another product belonging to a former product from the same seller. It's
unacceptable to have most of the reviews on new products coming from paid gigs
and fakers.

They need to sort this quick – even my mother who barely understands a thing
to computers is now wary of Amazon reviews.

------
will_pseudonym
"ReviewMeta, a US-based website that analyses online reviews, said it was
shocked at the scale of the unverified reviews, saying they were "obvious and
easy to prevent"."

 _Unverified_ reviews may be easy to prevent by disabling unverified reviews,
but then the scam just includes one extra step, having each account reviewing
a product purchase the item on Amazon, then reimburse the account. Easy
verified purchase.

You also would lose out on actual purchasers who bought it elsewhere than
Amazon who would want to leave reviews.

The problem of bad reviews is definitely an unsolved problem, as even if you
build in trust mechanisms (and Amazon surely does this already), the scammers
will build networks of self-reinforcing bots. You could calibrate the system
to heavily discount reviews of reviewers which have any "scam" tags, but then
the networks would just take longer to build, leaving legit reviews to build
up trust, and then leaving false reviews after having built up that trust.
These cat and mouse games will go on a long time.

The same issues happen across every open network where identity isn't
verified. As much as I (and others historically) have benefited from
pseudonymity, it's definitely being weaponized (Amazon, Facebook, Twitter,
etc) to benefit certain entities (companies, governments, etc), and the
ultimate result is a loss of trust in the networks at large. I don't know what
the solution will be, but the solution will be incredibly valuable.

I've thought about some sort of hybrid account handle system where you have
one account that has two handles associated with it -- one, your real-world
name, and another your pseudonym, but the single account is verified by real-
world ID. As a contributor to the network, you could post as your pseudonym or
your real world name, depending on the contribution that you are comfortable
making, and as a consumer of the network, you could choose at any time to only
view content of the network posted by real-world names, or pseudonyms. This
would limit the number of possible astroturfed accounts, but still allow for
sensitive discussion of heated matters.

Just throwing the idea out there because the need for some kind of solution to
this destruction in network quality is something that affects us all.

~~~
8note
the problem you'll run into is making sure those "real IDs" are actually real
IDs

------
designtofly
It has gotten awful. Every single time I've searched for a generic product (or
even a specific brand + model), I'm inundated with these nonsense branded
listings. I'm very close to canceling my Prime membership.

I think the best thing that Amazon has accomplished is pushing other retailers
to improve their fulfillment process. Just yesterday, instead of dealing with
the endless stream of copycat products on Amazon, I purchased a bunch of
running gear directly from Nike and it was shipped in less than 12 hours.

------
amai
Nice to see, that the main stream media takes note of services like
[https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/) . There is also
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/) . Both services show,
how bad Amazons filter for fake reviews really are. I still believe Amazon is
basically doing nothing to prevent fake reviews.

------
Causality1
Amazon needs to disallow unverified reviews. Their current acceptance is a
holdover from a time where people were much more likely to have bought a
product somewhere other than Amazon. Amazon needed these outside reviews to
curate its own offerings and give customers confidence in their shopping
choices. That hasn't been the case for a decade now. Amazon should delete all
non-verified reviews entirely.

------
everdrive
As everyone's pointing out, this problem seems to have exploded in the past
1-2 years.

I myself had a few trivial counterfeit purchases (batteries, lightbulbs) and
one serious one: a ladder. The rung snapped out from under me, and it was dumb
luck that I wasn't seriously injured. Anyhow, it's time to move on. Amazon is
moving into advertising, and the convenience no longer outweighs the other
costs.

------
jfk13
The many problems with Amazon reviews are hardly news to most of us on HN, I'm
sure. What is noteworthy, though, is to see such a report make the front page
of the BBC News site. I think we easily forget just how little public
awareness there is of issues that are obvious to us as "insiders" in the tech
world. Anything that helps to raise awareness, even just a little, is welcome.

------
coleifer
I bought some cologne from Amazon, (seller was listed as "Amazon") which
turned out to be fake. The scent was wrong, the bottle... except the box which
seemed authentic but had the barcode excised with a razor and covered up with
a sticker.

When I left a straightforward review, it was taken down with no explanation
and no recourse. I called and got a refund, but the fake 5-star reviews are
all still up.

------
tenaciousDaniel
Forgive me for being naive, but isn't this an easy problem to solve? Amazon
tracks shipments, I assume. Couldn't they just create a mechanism where a
completed shipment gives the purchaser one allowance for adding a review? This
way you can only review if Amazon has verified that you bought the product.

I must be missing something crucial here.

~~~
baroffoos
How it typically works is the company requests that you buy the product and
tells you they will refund your purchase if you leave a 5 star review. On
Amazons side it looks like these people really did buy the product. Fake
reviewers get paid in free stuff and the company just uses their marketing
budget to give stuff away.

------
CodeBiscuit
I've even been offered free products by a retailer that I have purchased an
item from - 'Free Dash Cam' read the email subject line and provided me with
all of the instruction with what to do, and a copy and pastable bit of text to
use aswell - I reported this to Amazon, and gave them copies of the emails etc
too.

------
dontbenebby
One useful hack is to use the DuckDuckGo bang command "!fake" to check the
fakespot rating for a listing.

If you have DDG set as your default browser you can just prepend "!fake" (no
quotes) before the url and get a breakdown on the review authenticity.

(Interestingly sometimes even AmazonBasics products have a bad fakespot
rating...)

------
Scapeghost
Is there any facet of human society that hasn't been subverted by the
relentless pursuit of profit?

Other than heavy-handed regulation (like verifying each and every account as
unique), some form of guaranteed minimum income may be the only way to buffer
people from resorting to such deceptive tactics in order to get by in the
world.

------
raghavarora
This article talks about unverified purchases, but in my experience, a lot of
verified purchases are also fake. I have stopped trusting positive reviews and
only go through the negative reviews and assess the product.

How to spot fake reviews - They are long, explain the product in detail and
similar to other fake reviews.

------
amai
If we can sort out spam emails with Naive Bayes, why can't we sort out spam
reviews in similar fashion?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_Bayes_spam_filtering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naive_Bayes_spam_filtering)

------
EnderWT
Link to the actual report by Which?

[https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/04/thousands-of-fake-
custo...](https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/04/thousands-of-fake-customer-
reviews-found-on-popular-tech-categories-on-amazon/)

------
ccarse
This is why I just pretend 5 star reviews don't exist. I figure all the other
reviews are probably legit and look at them. If all the other reviews are 1 or
2 star I'm not going to buy it. If there are 4 star and 3 star reviews it's
probably decent.

------
taytus
I'm always on the boat of: "The community votes what to read" but I've seen
this subject on the HN's home page over and over and over.

Isn't this an old story?

Are people discovering this about Amazon's reviews and upvoting out of
curiosity or am I reading HN way too frequently?

------
r_singh
Fake reviews are common on Airbnb.com as well. New hosts just request their
friends to book their house and then pay them back for the same. In this case
Airbnb may even benefit (unlike Amazon) since they receive their non-
refundable fee when a friend books the house.

------
externalreality
It's not just Amazon its everything. Companies spend large quantities of money
on media control, we all know this. I probably a hand full of media companies
in the USA, China, and India that are selling a review control service.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
Yeah and I feel the bots or human assisted bots are getting more and more
sophisticated. Even here on hacker news it feels like there is something less
organic than before about posts and comments rankings.

It may be that I am getting old and that the culture has changed but I'm not
sure...

~~~
externalreality
If I was to setup such a service I would have a simple text bot scanning
popular sites for occurrences of my brand name and when a hit occurs it would
make an Amazon Mechanical Turk ticket so that workers in Nepal could log a
system that cycles accounts to that service so that they can leave a good
review to counter the bad one. 10 cents a "counter" review. Why spend a bunch
of money for in-organic robo-reviews when you can have real people writing
reviews for dirt cheap.

A second service would be to have Americans pressure a site to have
detrimental user content removed. For example, if someone starts a thread
about how the name of my product was stolen from an indigenous community's
recipe, our service would nip that in the bud.

Your brand management department would love us. These services already exist.

------
ghobs91
www.fakespot.com is your friend.

------
spurgu
I check everything on Reviewmeta.com because of this. Wish they a bit better
search/categorization though. Awesome site nonetheless, filtering out
suspicious reviews to provide a "true rating".

------
throwmeawayl8r
1\. Bots

2\. Click-farms buying clicks from humans in India, Malaysia, countries in
Africa, etc.

3\. Mostly, but not all, Chinese distributers and manufacturers offering
inducements, bonuses and generally cajoling customers for 5 star reviews.

------
hrdwdmrbl
For product sellers it's also very frustrating. Hard to compete against
tricks. For sellers the fake reviews are only 1 of many similar problems with
fraudsters, trickers, scammers, etc.

------
stebann
We can see that the dynamics of ratings are very complicated. It's not about
the system's design, but also the load and bias on decisions from the buyer
and the seller.

------
deaps
If the purchasing base (or potential buyers) believe the reviews to be mostly
fake, they may lose trust in the service...

This seems like a problem worth fixing, from Amazon's perspective.

------
danschumann
What about the dating sites flooded with scammers pretending to be women,
trying to make you visit porn sites. They are pretty easy to spot after a
little bit.

------
sergiotapia
Is there an extension that just hides all non-verified reviews? I want reviews
from people who at least paid for the item.

------
jiveturkey
unverified != fake!!

Most of my reviews are "unverified", because I purchase elsewhere. But because
amazon is a great aggregator of reviews, I want to pay it back by helping
others.

Now of course, there are indeed many fake reviews, but this article does a
terrible job of explaining the situation.

~~~
dRaBoQ
The article mentions a case where 439 unverified reviews were all posted on
the same day for one kind of not-known brand headphones.

------
laughinghan
"Bought on Amazon" is becoming the new "Made in China".

------
dontbenebby
Ignore the score - pull up the critical reviews and look for common themes.

------
Yuval_Halevi
Amazon, Booking.com/Facebook/Reddit/TripAdvisor/Twitter

Fake reviews/accounts are one of the main issues social media and Content
generation sites are facing these days.

One of the solutions is using Blockchain/ or do a quick verification process
(Like upwork for example)

------
harry8
This is the sound of one of the AI bubbles going _POP_

Expect more frequency to come. Expect it to overcorrect so that AI is a dirty
word sometime soon and fantastic uses of statistical learning will be poison
in funding. It's all so predictable even an algo can see it coming.

------
stefek99
Have you been living under the rock?

Since when "no news" is a news?

------
rhizome
Amazon lets people sell $5 Ikea items for $45. Fuck them.

~~~
ryacko
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2017/10/24/or...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2017/10/24/orlando-couple-finds-65-pounds-marijuana-amazon-
order/793580001/)

Amazon lets drug dealers sell thousands of dollars of weed through their
storefront.

I wonder if Amazon allowed drug sniffing dogs to search the warehouse, if they
didn’t, seems like an endorsement of some kind.

------
garyclarke27
Amazon should at the least stop unverified reviews.

------
dmolony
Amazon - the company that broke online shopping.

------
throwmeawayl8r
AliExpress is worse. Fake/low-quality products just disappear completely and
there's very few, short reviews. It's almost as bad as eBay.

------
shard972
Look, mahcine learning is hard guys, we need to give amazon another few years
to work out the kinks and then no more false reviews ever again...

------
gesman
'r/flooded by/depends on/'

------
randomacct3847
I’ve commented on how scammy Amazon is multiple times on here. For whatever
reason I feel like there are more people on HN ready to defend Amazon than not
and call out those who say it’s become scammy as “overreacting.”

------
apacheCamel
Like everything else online, do your research. I assume we all know plenty of
people who have taken online reviews at face value, I have done it myself.
Like most other things on the internet, they can be faked. It is sad that
people take advantage of good faith systems like this and do not feel the
consequences.

Side note: Having the consumer group be named "Which?" and to include the
question mark in it makes it jolting to read in the middle of a sentence. I
can't tell if I like the name or dislike it a lot.

~~~
acdha
> Like everything else online, do your research.

There are many categories where this advice sounds a lot easier than it is.
There’s a whole industry creating fake review sites, farming things out to
people for favorable social media reviews, etc. and it takes a non-trivial
amount of time and skill to figure out which sources are reliable. As long as
the internet runs on advertising there’s no reason to expect this to get
easier since companies like Google make considerable amounts of money from all
of those ads.

~~~
apacheCamel
While I agree with you, I am not sure what the alternative you are searching
for is. Either you don't buy it, or put in enough diligence to find out more
about the product you are purchasing. I would assume a normal person would put
in the amount of effort that somewhat equates to the value of what they are
buying. I would never spend days researching the best brand of umbrella to buy
(not knocking umbrellas) but I would if it was a mouse or maybe keyboard. The
mouse has a higher perceived value to me and makes it worth it. Also, word of
mouth is still relevant and probably always will be. If my friends/family
enjoy a product, I am inclined to believe I will too.

