
The evolving fight against sham reviews - digisth
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21676835-evolving-fight-against-sham-reviews-five-star-fakes?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/five_star_fakes
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jmpeax
"Businesses that try to weasel their way to a higher rating (paying off grumpy
clients, for instance) have their Yelp pages branded with a red warning."

If you really hate a place, just give it some scam-looking reviews and watch
it burn.

~~~
sglassm
Imagine companies paying for fake positive reviews for their competitors...

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sneak
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046136/Is-Yelp-
scar...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3046136/Is-Yelp-scared-bad-
review-Company-defensive-filmmaker-nears-completion-documentary-exposing-
website-s-extortion-small-businesses.html)

It's pretty ironic, really, that Yelp, a company famous for extorting small
businesses for advertising subscriptions (with the threat of hiding positive
reviews), is complaining about the validity of reviews on their site.

Their whole business model, afaict, is a shady scam against people who are too
busy running their business to learn how to do SEO.

~~~
llamataboot
+1 for this. I know a ton of small restaurant/bar owners. None of them like
Yelp. All of them have been called and offered many versions of the "we can
make your bad reviews go away if you just fork over this subscription fee"
scam, even if not using those exact words.

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Retric
The really sad thing is fake reviews are really easy to counter. Want
meaningful reviews? Start reviewing everything you buy from Amazon.

But, meh tragedy of the commons.

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guelo
I've been a heavy Amazon shopper for years and there is no doubt that there
has been a huge spike in fake reviews recently, and they all seem to be marked
as Verified Purchase to the point that the Verified Purchase tag now makes me
more suspicious that it's a fake.

~~~
coleca
I have noticed a proliferation of "I received this product for {free |
discount | etc} in exchange for my unbiased review" notices tagging reviews on
what seems like every product I look for on Amazon these days. It's a shame
the reviews are so gamified now that they are losing their usefulness, at
least to those that realize the scam.

~~~
zzleeper
The last few times I had to buy a product, I just googled stuff like
"site:reddit.com usb charger" and read the comments and suggestions of actual
people; much better than the fake stuff from amazon.

I wonder how much it will take until someone starts a botnet discussing
products on reddit..

~~~
mertd
It would be naive to think Reddit doesn't already have people dropping product
suggestions for marketing purposes.

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hackuser
How accurate are Amazon's and Yelp's fake review detection algorithms?

* How many false positives are there? How many businesses do they unfairly penalize (and how many reviewers do they humiliate)? For example, perhaps some behavior trait common to a location or social class is misinterpreted as a fake review.

* How many false negatives are there? How many fake reviews are given extra legitimacy in the eyes of users because the algorithm gave them a pass? Maybe the algorithm weeds out only the bad fake reviewers, or a certain kind of fake reviewers. Perhaps a cottage industry of techniques to game the algorithms will arise, like SEO. I do know that decent shills know how to fool amatuer slueths; heck, I could do it: Write something long, with specifics, add a little balance to look reasonable, mirror what some others say, etc.

I'd be interested to know how Yelp and Amazon can test their algorithms. They
would need a large set of proven fake reviews, and a representative set would
be much more valuable. Where does one find those?

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n0us
I currently automatically assume that reviews online are fake. The thing about
paid reviews is that I don't have a problem with them in principal. I would
even like to see "trusted" groups or even companies who are paid to give
thorough reviews and post them to places like Amazon and Yelp so that you get
something other than "sux" "cover didn't look right" or "food wasn't spicy"
that is utterly unhelpful and throws off the score coming from people who
actually give fair reviews to products.

There would obviously be a conflict of interest for the people doing the
reviews which is why I think it would make sense for companies to pay an
intermediary who pays another firm to do the actual review. Companies that
give reviews could earn "trusted" status through Amazon or Yelp (even though
the are the mafia) etc.

~~~
dredmorbius
Consumer Reports:
[http://www.consumerreports.org/](http://www.consumerreports.org/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports)

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mc32
Why can't Amazon or Yelp, etc. weigh the trustworthiness of their reviewers?
Newcomers low till proven otherwise, long-time reviewers who prove trustworthy
higher. Trust low reviews more than high reviews, except for trustworthy
reviewers. Punish reviewers with lower weight when they break the trust.

How to know what's trustworthy? That's more difficult to establish, but
someone like an Amazon has the capacity to build something like this. So would
Yelp and they both have incentives to make the reviews published on their
platforms believable -else we'll all believe it's just spammy astroturfing.

~~~
digisth
It's not as easy as it seems. Many systems have already been devised, but fake
reviewers adapt; it's an arms race, just like with email spam. Bing Liu, who
has done work on sentiment analysis, has written about some techniques dealing
with spam/fakes on review sites. Here's just a sampling of popular methods and
flags:

\- Duplicate checking (same user on different products with similar reviews,
for example)

\- Meta-reviews ("was this review helpful?" \- can also be gamed)

\- user rating averages (all highs or all lows sometimes considered a flag)

\- ratio of "first product reviews" to total reviews on a per-product basis

\- "Super-reviewer" status (questionable, but often a flag)

\- Products with low sales ranks

\- Review ring detection (IP block, post times, etc.)

\- Early reviews

\- Users who give high ranks, while most other reviews are low

\- Positive reviews for one brand's products, and negative for others

\- "Verified" purchases

A lot of these already have countermeasures, and fake reviews have already
come up with counter-counter measures (like review-time staggering, using
multiple IP blocks, shipping empty boxes to defeat verified purchases, etc.)

The "how to know what's trustworthy?" is the million dollar question, and it
has many answers that happen to change over time. Not easy to solve.

~~~
mc32
Thanks for the rundown, that's pretty thorough.

Could they add a kind of 2FA when they ship product to the customer?
Understandably, this would drive down the rate of buyers posting reviews, but
could minimize astroturfing rings. In your confirmation email you get a link
which can only be used to review that product, if product is subsequently
returned, then weigh review less, specially if positive, if too many products
are returned, remove reviews for those products.

~~~
digisth
I'm not aware of any efforts in that direction. As far as the review link, I
don't think that would defeat the newer countermeasure involving 3rd party
sellers shipping an empty box (which never gets returned.) It still looks like
a verified purchase. Second-parties could require all items be shipped through
them (meaning they receive the item and inspect it, then reship it to the
customer), but the added expense seems like something they'd be unlikely to
spring for.

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Ch_livecodingtv
We can fight sham reviews, If everyone gets to start making reviews on
products and services purchased. The power of consumers is huge.

