
I write fake online reviews - jfk13
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47952165
======
bradleyjg
I write no reviews at all. Also, take no customer service surveys. Why provide
free services to billionaires?

Let amazon hire a product review staff. Let Verizon supervisors monitor the
quality of the phone staff. Let uber hire secret shoppers.

These companies are all exploiting your good will to enrich themselves.

~~~
bubblethink
>Why provide free services to billionaires?

Also why I never saw the point of sites like quora. Why are all these "subject
matter experts" spending countless hours writing free content for a platform
that is ultimately locked in and going to either a) Be infested with ads or b)
Going to charge money (like the publishers' racket in scientific publishing).

~~~
Joe-Z
At least for Quora (or rather StackOverflow for me) I could understand it as
satisfying a need to be in a community of experts and exchange ideas on more
fringe topics. Also it‘s probably a good thing to put on your resume if you
have amassed sufficient fake internet points ;)

Amazon reviews however... you‘re just a drop in the ocean and there‘s
certainly no community. Thus you‘d have to pay me if you want me to engage in
this.

~~~
derekp7
It could also be used to improve your technical writing abilities. Doesn't
really matter that you have submitted review number 5397, the effort that you
put into writing a persuasive argument is valuable to you in itself.

------
janpot
I tend to ignore good reviews and rely on bad ones mostly to make my
decisions. Will also never leave a good review when I'm satisfied, they are
indistinguishable from fake ones anyway, I tend to rather just leave bad
reviews when I'm not satisfied.

~~~
pmoriarty
The problem is that bad reviews can be just as fake as good ones, as they
could be written by the product's competitors.

Also, if a product is popular enough, odds are that even with a great product
there'll be a small fraction of people who'll just happen to get a dud, while
most of the rest will be satisfied.

Because of this, I tend to read both good and bad reviews, and give more
weight to the longer reviews that go in to great detail about the product and
why they rated it the way they did, with comparisons to other products being
especially helpful. Also helpful are reviews by professionals who really know
the field thoroughly. Unfortunately, such reviews are rare.

I also look at the ratio of good reviews to bad reviews, and look for products
with many reviews, though on Amazon this strategy is not quite as effective
these days as it once was. One of the big problems with Amazon's model is that
it seems that most people buy the products shown on the first page or two of
search results. Products on later pages might be just as good or even better,
but they may never get bought or reviewed because they weren't on the first
couple of pages.

~~~
saiya-jin
For me, it's the 4-star and 3-star reviews, and distribution of them compared
to the rest (this can be gamed though). I see no reason that somebody would
pay for 4 or 3 star reviews, and also competition would pay for 1 or 2 star
ones instead. Primitive logic, but worked +-OK for me even on Amazon.

~~~
bgeeek
The chap on BBC radio yesterday said that he deliberately gave lower marks (4
star) than 5 because of exactly that - it looked too obvious. He also said
that some of the products that he was paid to review he didn't even use
(hemorrhoid cream being one item).

I have also noticed the tit-for-tat reviews on Amazon between competitors. Its
quite common on the cheaper products, in my experience. I've bought one or two
awful things due to being caught by fake reviews, but I do tend to go back and
leave a dreadful review.

------
enriquto
Positive reviews are not very informative.

What I find more informative is bad reviews that get an answer from the
seller/company. I guess these interactions will be faked in the next iteration
of reviewogenesis.

~~~
laurent123456
Fake reviews are a game of cat and mouse. If writing good ones for their own
products no longer works, they'll start writing bad ones for competing
products.

------
oliwarner
I'm starting to recognise that the Internet —despite all its potential
benefits— is a platform to streamline the process of lying to each other.
Occasionally political, occasionally commercial, and very often social white
lies. The instant access it affords us is being exploited by everybody to
affect how we think, what we buy and who we like.

It's very rapidly becoming much worse. Machine learning will adapt to people
faster than legislation can protect them. And most of all, I don't know how we
reverse all this.That's what really scares me. I usually have an answer for
everything. All I've got here is: unplug all the things.

~~~
wool_gather
Do you think there's a qualitative change here, though? People have been lying
face-to-face, in various degrees, for those and other reasons forever.

~~~
oliwarner
Absolutely.

We shop in an environment where we are being told what other purchasers
thought about it. "Fake news" (made-up clickbait, not the Trumpian term for
non-news) spreads like wildfire, polarising anybody who takes it face value.

You can argue that the exposure to these lies is entirely self-inflicted, but
that's how society has moved on. The real question is if we can successfully
wean ourselves onto something better.

------
hamdshah
There are hundreds of groups on Facebook in which the seller will ask you to
buy the product give them 5 star review and they will return your money (some
time with the tip) on Paypal. And you can keep the product.

~~~
Nanocurrency
They're probably heaven for consumerists.

------
ArcMex
I only write reviews when my experience is on either extreme. Expectations
exceeded or the disappointment is too much to ignore.

It's kind of like work, innit? Who is going to pat your back when you arrive
and leave on time and get your work done? No one. Why should they? It's your
job.

Go above and beyond or go in the opposite direction and slack off and you
deserve all the feedback coming your way.

------
danieltillett
I have been thinking about the review problem for a long time and while I
think I have a practicable solution, I am not sure if there is any money to be
made. If truthful reviews cost more than fake ones is there anyone out there
to willing to pay the extra cost? Customers don't appear to want to pay
anything nor sellers.

Anyone got any thoughts?

~~~
SquishyPanda23
Consumers will pay for reviews they believe are truthful, like Consumer
Reports.

But it's far more lucrative for sellers to pay for fake reviews, e.g.
celebrity endporsements, magazine articles, youtube videos etc.

So much content out there is just lying about products for sale that I think a
for-profit model for honest reviews will inevitably decide to open itself up
to fake reviews or paid content. The pressure to do so is just to great and
the rewards are hard to turn down.

~~~
danieltillett
Are you sure consumers will actually pay? Assuming Consumer Reports is
truthful, what percentage of consumers actually pay for it?

My solution actually can't be opened to fake reviews, but it is expensive and
I haven't been able to find a work around for that. Unfortunately quality
costs.

~~~
bradleyjg
Looks like about 1%[1]. If that's not a big enough business opportunity for
you ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports)
(see circulation in sidebar)

~~~
danieltillett
What is not encouraging is the collapse in their subsciber base with an
average age of 65.

------
nathan_long
Planet Money did an episode
([https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/06/27/623990036/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/06/27/623990036/episode-850-the-
fake-review-hunter)) about fake reviews and talked with the creator of
ReviewMeta ([https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/)), which
attempts to distinguish real reviews from fake ones based on things like
similarity and clustered posting.

Of course, if it has or gets traction, fake reviewers will adapt, just like
spammers do.

~~~
jamestanderson
This is the first I've heard of ReviewMeta, but I've been using Fakespot[0]
for a couple years now and always reference it when buying on Amazon.

[0] [https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

------
richardwhiuk
Isn't this just fraud, and thus illegal?

~~~
yaseer
If it's not illegal, it should be made so. It's a form of false advertising.

------
anderskev
One thing I've noticed recently is that the number of reviews that are for a
completely different product seem to be skyrocketing. This was probably the
final straw for me when it came to trusting Amazon reviews, and now I usually
look to YouTube to get info. Granted, most of the YouTube reviews are
sponsored but it seems like the reviewers are almost always up front about
this and it helps to see someone physically using the product.

Given that the review problem seems to be growing worse, I wonder what the
priority of fixing this is internally at Amazon. Even if I turn to another
source for reviews I'll still probably purchase from Amazon if the price is
lower, so I wonder what effect this actually has on their bottom line?

It seems like the only real solution is to make it so time consuming to write
a review that the economics of paying someone to do so no longer make sense.
I'm not entirely sure how this could be done. Maybe have a longer length
requirement? Force a reviewer to upload photos? Someone once commented here
that making the reviews ephemeral or decay in importance over time could be a
solution, which I thought was an interesting idea.

------
MisterTea
When researching the first thing I do is A. ignore 5 star reviews and B. read
the 1 star reviews first. That's probably the best way to figure out if what
you're buying is a piece of trash or a legit product that works. One star
reviews are usually written by pissed off customers. I also don't usually
leave reviews unless it's a one star piece of garbage that really pisse dme
off.

Amazon is plagued by this. I just looked up earbuds on Amazon and clicked on a
pair on the first page of results. It's a brand I've never heard of with a
design that looks silly, perfect. 473 reviews, ALL 5 star, ALL posted April
13th, multiple from the same users. The laughable part is many are for
different products like screen protectors and "lightning wires" (lol). What a
joke. How Amazon expects to stay in business is beyond me.

~~~
sureaboutthis
I wouldn't look at the one star reviews either. I usually start with the three
star reviews and glance at the four and two stars unless there is a
preponderance of one.

------
StefanKarpinski
What is with HN always deleting the word "Why" from the beginning of titles? I
get that it can be a filler word, but it can also significantly change the
meaning. For example, the blog post that introduced Julia to the world was
titled "Why We Created Julia" [1] and if the "Why" had been deleted it would
have completely changed the sense of that title. In this case, it's a fairly
benign change, but I've seen this drastically affect the meaning of posts
recently. It seems like a bad practice that is at odds with HN's excellent
policy of respecting original titles of articles.

[1] [https://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-
julia](https://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-julia)

------
smurv
For me, the whole "rate product/experience by X amount of stars" system has
always been broken. Especially when it seems to be taken much more seriously
than it was originally meant. Ok, I'm not a UX expert or a data analyst, but
as far as I know, the statistics that are drawn from these star reviews were
originally only meant to be some sort of rough pointer to approximately
evaluate how good a product is. And the result should in its turn, determine
if a product needs to be further reviewed. But on the other hand I get why
almost everyone who offers a product or a service utilises this system, it's
easy. Is this product good or bad? 1 or 5 stars? Yes or no? The web isn't
really compatible for maybes, yes buts, and no howevers.

------
amelius
Wikipedia's article on "reviews" [1] is surprisingly sparse.

I expected to find an overview of approaches to combat manipulation of
reviews, e.g. through AI or collaboratively through reputation systems, but
alas.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review)

~~~
stareatgoats
The article on astroturfing may be what you are looking for [0]. The Review
article should have contained at least a reference to that concept.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)

------
paul7986
Everyone hates this but we need...

A digital driver’s license/ID card type of thing for using the Internet(by
country), especially considering deepfakes. You can still post anonymously but
it won’t hold much weight vs. using your real name/ID. Something that if
posting junk your reputation/credit/trustworthiness takes a hit!

~~~
oliwarner
Yes, that limits the number of identities a review can come from, but it
cannot tell if they're lying. It's powerless against approaches like: "Buy my
product from Amazon, leave me a 5 star review and I'll pay your fees, a $10
bonus and let you keep the item".

~~~
paul7986
Well if your caught lying your online and offline identity/reputation will
take a huge hit. It would be extremely detrimental financially and
professionally to your life ... like having to go bankrupt. Be moral and just
online or you don’t matter! Otherwise in time the Internet may not matter as
much.

Further re deepfake stuff that’s even worse ...threat of going to jail!

~~~
oliwarner
> if your caught lying

How do you vet my published opinion? If I order something from Amazon and give
it a five star review, how do you, or Amazon know that the opinion I'm
submitting in my review is genuine or not? You can't even vet my criteria at
the point of review.

I think that is a key point here. We have started to trust aggregate
"opinions" as a source of truth, assuming high numbers will obviate any
tampering, assuming tampering could not be done at scale.... Something that
just doesn't exist for most things on Amazon.

~~~
paul7986
Well why don't you and millions of others commit crimes... cause there are
consequences.

There is zero consequences now for getting paid, bribed, etc for writing fake
reviews and little by little helping to destroy the Internet.

There are laws about pollution... why not have laws against polluting the
Internet with bribery/racketeering junk that is detrimental to the health of
the Internet?

------
sonnyblarney
You can get specific details out of a review for what works/does not. That can
be helpful. Details are harder to fake.

------
Nanocurrency
I always read the reviews that are in the middle, 3/5 stars. I want to see
people write objectively, with both pros and cons.

------
tunnuz
TL;DR

for money.

------
externalreality
The title should be "Why bbc reads Hacker News comments to get ideas for its
next article." I could swear I just read a discussion on HN (just hours ago)
in response to an article about Amazon getting flooded with fake reviews. Some
suggested how they write fake reviews for money and how one could monetize
fake reviews. Then here comes this BBC article. Coincidence. I think not.

~~~
stevekemp
The recent article posted here was actually a link to the previous BBC
article:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47941181](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47941181)

For reference the discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669898)

~~~
externalreality
Well I guess its not all that bad if, at least, the article is following up on
points of interests collected from responses to a former article.

