
Have Online Reviews Lost All Value? - ytNumbers
https://www.wsj.com/articles/have-online-reviews-lost-all-value-11569606584?mod=rsswn
======
neonate
[http://archive.is/m39hT](http://archive.is/m39hT)

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ineedasername
No, but I find myself gravitating much more towards the negative reviews. Not
only are they more likely to be legitimate reviews, they tell me the reasons
someone didn't like a product, which I find more valuable. Often because a
failure for one person might not be an issue I care about: For example, if a
reviewer for a book says, "Author spent too much time on the individual people
and not enough time moving the plot forward" then I might view that as a
_positive_ if I like deep character building. It's a legitimate complaint, but
from my perspective it's a feature, not a bug. Or I just might not care: "Item
arrived broken" is not something I care much about when it's something that's
easy to return/exchange, unless many people are also saying even when it
arrived intact, It breaks too easily on use.

~~~
Sessions
Negative reviews can also be compromised. I was reading through Borderlands 3
metacritic user reviews when I noticed at least 3 reviewers made identical
complaints of boring, "repeative" gameplay... My best guess is it's attracted
a culture war brigade for some reason. But it was a good a reminder to keep my
guard up even on negative reviews- the same sockpuppets companies use to pump
up their own products could be easily redeployed to undermine a competitor's.

~~~
jplayer01
No, some people just feel Borderlands is excessively grindy, and not the fun
kind. I hold that same opinion, and I don’t think I’m part of any culture war
or brigade. Some people may not like what you like for exactly the same
reasons that you consider positive. Doesn’t make them shills or brigadists or
whatever. It just means they have different preferences.

~~~
ummonk
It definitely indicates a brigade when multiple reviews have the same
improbable misspelling though...

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k33n
I worked for Luma when they were having a review war with Eero. Since Luma is
defunct I don't mind straight up telling you.. we were paying a lot of money
for positive reviews in order to make our rating match up with Eero's. We had
an inferior product with a lot of problems, so it was a losing battle in the
end.

Probably the most interesting part is that Amazon was one of our lead
investors. We came to them for help, and they told us in a wink wink nudge
nudge sort of way that our only option was to just keep buying positive
reviews.

~~~
sundayedition
> Since Luma is defunct I don't mind straight up telling you.. we were paying
> a lot of money for positive reviews in order to make our rating match up
> with Eero's.

I can't help but feel that in addition to being unethical, this might also be
illegal. [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2017/03/los-a...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-
releases/2017/03/los-angeles-based-sage-auto-group-will-pay-36-million-settle-
ftc)

~~~
gnicholas
I have been disappointed to find that many startup founders — even those who
work in "impact" or "education" — do not care about the ethics or legality of
paid reviews. I had a discussion with one founder a few years back, and at
first I thought he was simply unaware of the then-new FTC guidelines. But it
became clear that he did not care if what he was doing was illegal since "it's
just the way business gets done", in his words. Caveat emptor!

~~~
jplayer01
There are also no consequences, so there’s no reason for a company to act
morally/legally in our current economic system. I’ve never heard of a company
paying fines for buying positive reviews.

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jacobkg
Lately I’ve been looking at the distribution of reviews. TripAdvisor and
Amazon both have bar graphs of rating distributions. In general, I see these
distributions:

Great products: Generally a very good product will have between 80 and 90
percent 5-star reviews and then the remaining percentages will tail down with
the lowest percent of 1 star reviews. This was how I picked where to go on my
honeymoon on TripAdvisor.

Fake Products: All 5-star reviews with zero reviews of any other rating.

So so products: Similar to great products in that the number of reviews
decreases as the rating goes down, but the percentage of 4 star reviews is
significant and there are less than 70% 5 star reviews

Bad products: Less 5 star reviews than 4 or 3 star reviews. These are
surprisingly uncommon and feel quaint when I see them.

Mixed supply chain (Fakes) or serious quality issues: What I refer to as the
“1 star bump” where a product has more 1-star reviews than 2, 3, or 4 star
review. Similar to “so so products” except you see the 1 star bar sticking out
noticeably in the graph. The 1-star bump is my most reliable signal not to buy
something. Unfortunately it’s very common on Amazon.

~~~
tvanantwerp
I feel like I see only the "1 star bump" distribution for nearly everything.
Most people happily rate something as a 5 with little thought, and a few write
a very long screed to accompany a 1; almost nobody cares to do anything in
between.

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jurassic
I think reviews have lost most value, but mainly due to Amazon’s co-mingling
of inventory, merging similar product listings, and overall massive
counterfeit problems. Even if you have a high quality review from a trusted
source (Wirecutter? Friends and family?) you have no way to know if what you
receive will be equivalent to the thing they endorsed.

This happened to me recently with an exercise bike which was an absolute piece
of trash compared to what my sister bought and recommended. It makes me want
to completely avoid Amazon.

~~~
CaptainZapp
_It makes me want to completely avoid Amazon._

Then why don't you?

I seriously don't want to be glib, but I read so many complaints about Amazon,
their intermingling of stock from various, partially shady sources, fakes,
dodgy reviews, which they do shit-all about, etc, etc.

Personally I don't buy at Amazon since when they pulled a bait and switch on
their privacy pledge, which was pretty much in the beginning.

Their predatory behavior, their treatment of employees, their not giving a
fuck if you get sent fakes, their systemic viloation of privacy, their dodgy
support of law enforcement and their overall creepy behaviour all just
reinforce me in this and frankly: I can live quite well without buying
anything at Amazon.

So I'm genuinly curious: Why do so many people still buy despite an avalanche
of complaints?

~~~
gwd
> So I'm genuinly curious: Why do so many people still buy despite an
> avalanche of complaints?

Personally, I do try to avoid them. Originally it was because I didn't want
them to grow in market power; now its' because the results are a lot worse.

But it's not always possible. Probably 80-90% of the time I'm able to find
what I'm looking for somewhere else. But sometimes what I'm looking for I can
only really find on Amazon.

That, and people still buy me Amazon gift cards.

~~~
JohnFen
> That, and people still buy me Amazon gift cards.

When people give me gift cards of any sort, I just sell them to someone else
outright.

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mattlutze
As the trope goes, if the author asks a question in the title of their
article, the answer is "no, not really."

I'd counter that online reviews still have pretty much the same value they
ever have had, and that we're more aware of what the limits of that value is.

Lot's of real-person reviews exist on many platforms, and reading through a
few often gives you a decent idea of what you're getting yourself into.

Paid-for reviews are certainly a scourge, and one business getting loyalists
to down-vote a competitor is also a problem. But that's been a thing since the
beginning of recommendation features, and we should celebrate a little bit
that we're more hip and conscious today to these operations.

~~~
ghaff
The real question is: What is the alternative?

There are some useful review sites like Wirecutter that arguably cut through
the clutter in a lot of cases. But the amount of "stuff" and experiences (e.g.
restaurants) out there is pretty overwhelming for what's left of professional
reviewers outside of some fairly narrow domains.

I do a lot of travel. Are Yelp and TripAdvisor reviews of restaurants great?
Not really. Are they generally better--given _some_ critical mass--than
picking a restaurant at random or because it has a cool name? Almost
certainly. (Of course, online menus and the like can be somewhat useful as
well.)

~~~
rorykoehler
We're building Bibimapp so you can get recommendations from your direct and
extended network. Personal recommendations from people you trust.

[https://bibimapp.com](https://bibimapp.com)

~~~
frutiger
Off-topic: is the name related to this delicious Korean dish?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibimbap)

~~~
interestica
It has to be. This article has peaked my cynicism and I suspect your comment
is just intended to seem like an organic response to legitimize that app plug.
To keep it on topic, I suppose that's the result of the modern review-scape:
I'm sceptical of any review or comment about a product.

~~~
defined
Nitpick: “piqued”, not “peaked” (though it’s a homonym)

~~~
interestica
Weird. I know this. Maybe I added it in to make my comment seem more
legitimate and to trigger a response. ;) All swell that ends swell I guess.

------
dual_basis
One thing I've noticed is that negative reviews, even very specific ones,
often just serve to delay my purchase. I was looking to buy an ab wheel
recently, and almost every single option on Amazon had some negative reviews
which seemed legitimate and did give me pause. "Handle snapped off after just
one week, causing me to smash into the floor and loose a tooth", for example.
Of course I don't want that to happen, so now I end up spending over an hour
looking through products, all which are under $40, none of which are free from
some sort of specific complaint - "Handle is too narrow, this is not good for
your lats. Can't believe the manufacturer would cheap out on this, I ended up
with back pain after less than two weeks of use.", "The additional wheel makes
this too stable. I've had many in the past, I clearly do not get as good a
workout from this one. Will be returning it." etc.

These all have 4-5 star reviews, and otherwise seem perfectly fine. If I saw
them in a store I would have purchased them without a second thought.

Ultimately I just went back and bought the first one I saw. It seems perfectly
fine, I can't see any issues with it.

~~~
Timberwolf
I went through this with power tools. What I found was products would end up
with three broad classes of negative reviews, segmented mainly by price:

* Expensive tools would have gripes about price or lack of inclusion of accessories. If I bought something in this category it would be problem-free, but so far in excess of what I need as a hobbyist/DIYer that it was comical, e.g. a circular saw that could happily saw my car in half when all I'm doing is building bookshelves.

* Cheap tools would have a consistent pattern of reviews mentioning one or more specific failures that occurred during normal use - e.g. belt sanders that swallow belts or drills where the chuck quickly comes loose. If I bought something in this range, I'd experience exactly the same failure myself.

* Finally, mid-price tools would have the same number of poor reviews as the cheap ones, but the scenarios described would be abusive or unrealistic expectations: people complaining that they couldn't use an orbital sander on concrete tiles or fit enormous router bits to something consumer-grade.

The realisation I wish I'd come to earlier is that stuff in the last category
is fine, particularly when it comes to a tool I only use occasionally. Stuff
here does exactly what I need, gives good results, and doesn't result in me
paying for power I'm never going to use. I guess that's part of the problem
with online reviews - needing to get to the level where you're analysing them
in depth to differentiate between "it broke because it's badly made" and "it
broke because I was doing something completely crazy with it".

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mrfusion
I think shopping sites should simply show the percent returns for each item.
Maybe break it down by return reason.

~~~
codazoda
At first thought, this might be useful information. It might be less helpful
for very inexpensive products where returning the defective item isn't worth
the effort. I suspect sellers wouldn't want to encourage returns as a way to
show dissatisfaction, since they are so expensive.

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Spooky23
Yes, but.

I don’t Amazon anymore, but the reviews were and I assume still are completely
unreliable for many segments. Too many players running to the bottom.

For other things, you need to know the market. Restaurants and hotel reviews
are full of bad info (fakes, ultra-picky people, etc) but it’s easy to extract
useful information. Usually the fakes have details that only workers would
care about or are just pure praise without specifics. People on a vacation
tell stories and business travelers usually complain about things that cost
them time.

You also need to consider how you use a review. The stars are there to sell
the product. I look for corroborated information about things I don’t like,
and mostly ignore the positive. That doesn’t work on Amazon because the fakes
are more common and brazen than real reviews, and Amazon facilitates the
fakery as more reviews drive transactions.

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rahidz
I've found ReviewMeta ([https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/))
useful for Amazon reviews, though it still doesn't solve the issue of co-
mingling products. So generally for buying items I use Amazon or a niche
subreddit's recommendation, then buy the product off eBay, the manufacturer's
website, or a physical store.

As far as "place" reviews, Google reviews in my area haven't let me down yet.
Yelp has been hit-or-miss; I dislike their "not currently recommended" review
system. TripAdvisor isn't too useful in my local area as there's not nearly as
many reviews as on Google/Yelp.

~~~
sambe
I don't get the feeling ReviewMeta is very sophisticated. FakeSpot and
ReviewMeta often contradict each other. I often spend time on both sites and
then realise that either all the candidate products are not great, or I've
wasted time gaining little confidence and should just pick one.

~~~
FakespotCom
Fakespot CTO here. That's a good observation. Our engines utilize NLP heavily
conjoined with proprietary ML models to detect influenced reviews that basic
statistical analysis will never (or with low levels of success) be able to
infer from review data sets, unless there are very basic signals such as 100
5-star reviews posted in an hour.

Fake review authors and providers are increasingly becoming sophisticated to
bypass various filters in place on Amazon and other websites so you need to be
able to leverage SOTA analysis to detect them. We also don't reveal how we
detect certain fake reviews due to the fact that they will use that
information to their advantage to further exploit our system, which allows us
to be a couple steps ahead.

Anyone interested to know more about this topic feel free to email me at
saoud@fakespot.com.

~~~
tasubotadas
It would be awesome if you could support amazon.de

~~~
FakespotCom
We'd love to add support for German. We'd need a lot of retraining of our
models to support the language however, it is in our road map!

------
ddelt
For me, once I became aware of the fact that it is now a commonplace activity
to pay for falsified reviews, and there are technology platforms that scan
reviews to determine if they are fake or not... almost any review I read on a
mainstream shopping platform is suspect to me now. Which is unfortunate,
because that's where most of the convenience and value as a consumer is to me.

If I now want to make a purchase based heavily on user reviews, I do like many
of the other posters here have said: I look at the reviews and low and high
middle of the spectrum, have to read each review for obvious, glaring
generalizations and seek out language that implies real-world usage vs.
hyperbole, and use other features at my disposal, including a verified
reviewer stamp (if on Amazon), tools like FakeSpot or ReviewMeta, and reading
reviews from competing shopping platforms for the same item if possible (if
shopping on Amazon for a widget, look for reviews on eBay or the website of
the widget manufacturer). If it's a technology purchase, I'll also look up a
bunch of reviews from at least 3-4 technology review platforms, placing a
greater weight on those who have included screenshots of their actual usage of
the product, which tend to imply a greater deal of rigor to go through for a
fake review (but this doesn't mean it's completely trustworthy either).

These additional forms of verification, on one hand, could be likened to how
we used to shop before internet shopping was a thing (we'd ask a bunch of
people for reviews in real life, visit a bunch of stores and window shop, and
perhaps read about it in a newspaper or try it ourselves in a real-life demo
in the store), but at the end of the day, I choose to shop online for the
convenience vs. brick and mortar stores, and this is the unfortunate evolution
of that technology.

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harel
I now look first at 3 star reviews. These are less likely to be biased and
more likely to represent a middle ground between the good and bad aspects of
the product. It's sad that we had to get there but the trust is gone with 4-5
star reviews for me.

~~~
lloeki
Something strange I’ve seen on more than one occasion and on multiple
platforms is 1-star glowing reviews and 5-star bashing reviews.

Also, when looking at overall reviews for a given thing there is usually a
pattern for fraudulent ones, kind of like students having to summarise from
the same text.

~~~
fasicle
I've noticed this is particularly common on the Google Play store. Apparently
the reason is reviews which go against what most people are reviewing are
given a higher priority and more likely to be shown to potential users.

E.g. if an app is getting mostly 5 stars and you give it a 1 star, your rating
will be more prominently shown in Google Play.

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goatinaboat
I was looking for something on Amazon the other day, my searches revealed
dozens of odd-sounding brands that I had never heard of before, all of which
had lots of 5-star reviews, all of which seemed to be for a different product
than the one listed.

~~~
notacoward
You're looking at a confluence of two problems. One is that drop-shipping
directly from Chinese manufacturers has become so cheap and easy (because of
an international-postal-rule exemption that has been discussed here before)
that everyone's doing it. Including the manufacturers themselves, some of whom
I'm pretty sure make up the brand names literally at random. It costs them
nothing at all to make up a few dozen brands, each presenting the product in a
slightly different way, in hopes that one of those presentations will catch a
few more eyes. It's basically the same incentive structure that gave us junk
mail and (even more so) spam email.

The other problem is "review washing". Some vendors do the "bait and switch"
themselves, but there's also an actual market for Amazon listings with good
reviews attached. All an unscrupulous vendor has to do is buy one of those and
change literally everything that goes into it, from contact details to the
actual product. It's like if you could buy the right to a best-seller book
cover, replacing the content for books already in brick-and-mortar stores with
whatever you want. That's why sites like ReviewMeta and FakeSpot are
absolutely essential for anyone shopping on Amazon nowadays.

~~~
hnick
If you have some spare time and are going for an item that's hard to make
wrong, this can serve you too. I bought an item that was using a brand name in
the title on eBay, but what I got was a cheap knockoff. The box itself had the
Chinese branding so it was very obvious.

I ended up getting a full refund and it works fine. I was annoyed at the
deception more than anything - the item is fine, but they may have cost a sale
to a legitimate supplier by abusing the trademark.

------
hnick
Answer is no, as others have said. But I think it depends a lot on which
reviews and what you're looking at.

I frequently use Google's reviews for finding food places. While it's not
100%, and is HEAVILY biased to the top end (you probably want to aim for 4.2
or higher), it's been very reliable across many locations and even countries
for me. Something I like is that a hole in the wall banh mi place is just as
likely to earn a high rating as a 3 star restaurant - the ratings reflect the
execution of what is being attempted, so cheap eats can rate well and
sometimes that's all we want.

For games and media, I actually like the aggregators a lot (Metacritic). It's
not the final word, and idiots do review bomb some titles (but mostly AAA
games that I would avoid), but the "wisdom of crowds" seems surprisingly
accurate overall. Steam reviews with their "Overwhelmingly Positive" is
similar.

For individual items on Amazon or hotel rooms though, as other posters have
said the mid-range reviews with something to say beyond the rating are the
most worthwhile. I can tell if they're like-minded or whether their concerns
mean nothing to me. On this note one amusing thing is that US reviews often
focus on "the service" (probably because they're expected to pay extra for it)
while I don't really care much about that and don't see it mentioned in other
countries unless it's egregious.

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thess24
Something I've been thinking about recently is that there should be a site
that only takes the "good" products from amazon and displays them for
different categories - maybe only the top 20 or so. If i'm looking for an oven
mitt / phone case / whatever the amount of junk is overwhelming. I envision it
would essentially be a semi-curated list of amazon items. Anyone know of
something like this? It's on my backlist of projects to build if I can't find
any substitutes.

~~~
dewey
Isn't that kinda what [https://thewirecutter.com/](https://thewirecutter.com/)
is doing?

~~~
thess24
Thanks for the link - I'll probably just use this instead!

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bluedino
If I'm looking for reviews, I look at results from forums. There's internet
communities out there for everything.

Forums are usually good for compiling lists of 'approved' items as well.

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oflannabhra
I have fully shifted away from doing my own research on what to buy to going
to recommendation sites. I've always thought I had an astute ability to detect
fake reviews (and I was probably right for the first wave of low effort paid
reviews). What made me change was the following: 1) Companies and consumers
cooperating in huge, fake review rings, 2) product search at places like
Amazon becoming totally undifferentiatable, and 3) the lack of trust in tools
to combat them (fakespot, etc).

I now just go to a recommendation site that earns income through affiliate
kickbacks. I use Wirecutter [0], Rtings [1], plus a handful of smaller forum /
community sites for categories those don't cover.

I actually think this is an enormous opportunity for several huge categories:

1) Tool reviews: especially with the rate of battery innovation, there is a
huge opportunity to have thorough reviews and category recommendations of both
consumer and professional tools.

2) Camera / DSLR / video - There's no lack of thorough reviews in this
category, but making sense of it is near impossible unless you're a
professional.

3) IoT gear - This isn't hugely important to me, but similar to cameras and
tools there are a variety of systems that lock users in, and getting
recommendations based on which system a user already has would be relatively
simple.

I have found these categories to be lacking not only in trustable reviews, but
mostly in updated recommendations. Even if reviews exist, it is up to the
effort of the user to read them all and build up a knowledge base of similar
options to select from. Each of these categories have a high enough volume and
purchase price that affiliate fees could easily support a recommendation
business.

[0] - [https://thewirecutter.com](https://thewirecutter.com)

[1] - [https://www.rtings.com](https://www.rtings.com)

~~~
yborg
I don't follow why you distrust sites like Fakespot but trust something like
Wirecutter which as you note is directly incented to shill review products
that offer more affiliate revenue.

------
freeAgent
They haven't lost all value, but you certainly can't take them at face value.
I always make sure to read the negative reviews, as others have mentioned.
I'll also frequently look at the review history of any review that resonates
with me one way or another to see if they appear to be a normal person or a
paid shill. Amazon could probably solve this problem if it wanted since it has
access to purchase histories, shipping addresses, and review histories for all
accounts on its site. I assume that the problem of fake reviews isn't solved
because Amazon doesn't care enough about it to take the necessary action and
fix it. It may also help Amazon's bottom line to have a bunch of highly-rated
products for sale, even if those ratings are fake.

------
aj7
I first and sometimes only read the one star reviews, and look at their
percentage. If one-five have a distribution with a big slope discontinuity…

If it passes this test, I might read some of the other reviews looking for
problems that I might agree with the viewer on.

------
notadoc
Considering that anyone can go on Fiverr and pay for hundreds of 5 star
glowing (or 1 star negative) reviews for nearly anything that can be reviewed
on the web, I would say online reviews are largely BS.

------
scarejunba
They have not. They've just graduated to a place where you can't lie: Reddit.
On Reddit, everyone is sceptical of the guy who doesn't have a long history of
comments. People who've only just joined a subreddit will be viewed
sceptically.

You'll get pretty good reviews if you do "XYZ reddit".

The problem for the guy trying to game the reviews is that a real user reviews
things too sparsely. There'll be one review in maybe a hundred comments and
five submissions.

~~~
mclightning
I do exactly this. It has worked for me so far.

------
_0o6v
TrustPilot is just completely ridiculous. For a company who's entire USP
revolves around 'real' reviews, the vast, vast majority are so obviously fake.

~~~
hnick
A very easy way to stack the deck on such providers is to just send review
requests to customers that you know are happy. This is even easier if you have
a two-tier system (use your internal reviews on-platform to find the happy
customers).

------
njharman
Same media illiteracy problem as Fake News. Most people are unable to discern
ulterior motives. So, "trust".

btw; The solution is not improving one's ability to discern (because that is
an arm's race the people with power motives (political, financial) are gonna
out spend you and vast majority of humans are incapable of beating that)
Rather it is by default not to trust and have high bar for earning your trust.

------
Mathnerd314
I was getting a screen protector and apparently they're so cheap / specialized
that they have no reviews at all. I ended up looking at reviews for other
products by the same company.

It could also be that they're all dropshippers and change their brand
frequently to avoid negative reviews, but the stock graphics were at least
slightly tweaked compared to Alibaba's.

------
tyfon
I don't trust reviews at all unless I know the "reviewer" in real life, that
is if someone I know tells me it's good.

Good thing you have 14 day "no questions asked money back" guarantee on
anything physical bought online in Europe. I've used that option quite a few
times when the product is trash.

------
harimau777
It wouldn't solve everything, but I think that the problem could be
significantly helped with the following changes:

Only allow reviews from people who actually purchased the product.

Make it fraud to pay spammers to review your product.

Show the country where a seller is located.

Make Amazon (and similar marketplaces) liable and on the hook for returns if a
seller disappears.

------
rossdavidh
The star-ratings are nearly worthless, and to the extent there is any value,
it is in 2-to-4 star reviews (less likely to be fake).

However, the explanation, because harder for a bot to churn out believably, is
still often worth something, not least because things that bother other people
might be a plus for me.

------
known
Failed due to Homogeneity, Centralization, Division, Imitation and
Emotionality as per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds#Failures_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds#Failures_of_crowd_intelligence)

------
0x262d
the reviews are hosted by amazon. they exist to facilitate profitmaking by
selling stuff. the company never even pretends to have goals at odds with
that. some part of that requires barely pretending to not encourage this
behavior... but this is inevitable.

------
olivermarks
I look for practical information in reviews such as 'works well but the
plastic grommet holder snapped off after a week of use, look out for the weak
electric dimmer switch' etc etc. The subjective reviews are mostly a waste of
time

------
RenRav
For popular things? Yes, not enough of the information is reliable. Unpopular
and niche things still benefit from reviews. It's almost as if the quality and
usefulness goes up as the review count stays low.

------
flippinburgers
When it comes to entertainment, largely a high level of positive reviews no
longer tells me anything because the internet has saturated the planet.
Average people are upvoting everything.

------
dickdickery
A big percentage of reviews on Yelp are fake.

Sure you can buy fake yelp reviews on [http://freepage.io](http://freepage.io)
and other sites.

------
quantumfoam
I prefer to read the 1-star reviews. Often, there's nuggets of information
written if it's not entirely someone's complaint about a product/thing.

------
mbostleman
Nope. They just require the same critical thinking and situational awareness
that is required to spot phishing, obviously malicious links, dark patterns,
etc.

------
JohnFen
From my point of view, online reviews are not quite entirely without value,
but their value is extremely low. I rarely bother reading them anymore.

------
AznHisoka
In the enterprise side of things, I find G2Crowd and TrustRadius reviews
useless in that they are too skewed towards the positive end of things.

------
perseusprime11
An AI-based platform that identifies legitimate reviews can easily find a
product/market fit. Is anybody here interested?

------
username3
View reviews by nth degree friends.

------
skizm
Goodhart's law in action.

------
kerkeslager
I post frequently here with an anti-advertising stance. Briefly: advertising
is often just unambiguously lying, and when it's not, it's still a one-sided
collection of facts. Advertising breaks one of the core ideas of capitalism:
that the best products or best prices will win, because a better-advertised
product can beat a cheaper, higher-quality product. If one company spends
money on advertising, all their competitors have to start spending money on
advertising, which means that the entire market has to take money away from
researching and manufacturing quality, or pass that cost on to the consumer.

A common response I get is, "But how will we find out about products?" My
stance is that professional review sites supported by users (examples:
Consumer Reports, OutdoorGearLab, LabDoor) are the solution.

So why not consumer reviews?

1\. The obvious thing is that it doesn't solve the problem with advertising.
Advertisers can pose as consumers and post reviews. Sophisticated methods of
detecting this (i.e. ignore all 1- and 5-star reviews) just fall prey to more
sophisticated advertisers (i.e. computer generate 30 5-star ratings to keep
your star rating up, and then post one carefully-crafted 4-star rating written
by a human).

2\. Even if you do manage to filter advertisers, you still tend to hear from
the extremes. Irrational positivity isn't better than irrational negativity: a
person who posts all 5-star reviews because they want to be nice isn't better
than the furious customer with a grudge.

3\. Consumer reviews encourage what I'll call second-level advertising: if you
can't advertise directly, then you try to get your consumers to advertise for
you. For example: spamming your users with "If you like our product please
leave a review on iTunes/GooglePlay/Amazon" or the YouTube classic, "Don't
forget to Like and Subscribe!"

4\. Consumers generally aren't experts, which means that consumer reviews are
more susceptible to Parkinson's Law of Triviality[1]. A good example of this
are the reviews on products that say things like "The parts feel cheap and
flimsy." Well, did they break? Probably not, or you would have said that.
Titanium parts are thinner and lighter than steel, which sometimes gives them
the impression of being cheap and flimsy, when they are in fact more expensive
and stronger. But in a more general sense, consumer reviews tend to focus on
the look or price of something rather than harder-to-understand things like
performance and durability.

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

------
myself248
Betteridge's law thwarted at long last?

~~~
tanr54ok
No not really. They didn’t have much value to begin with. Nothing
fundamentally changed.

------
x86party
1/5 Stars - Would not review again.

