
Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it’s getting harder to spot them - admiralspoo
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/06/amazon-reviews-thousands-are-fake-heres-how-to-spot-them.html
======
ilamont
I'd like to know how it's possible for third-party sites such as
[https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com) to more effectively
identify fake Amazon reviews while Amazon (with presumably better data) fails
so miserably.

Same question applies to Twitter. Regularly we see researchers uncovering
evidence of fake accounts and bot networks pushing spam, conspiracy theories,
and misinformation ([https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-
about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots)) while Twitter struggles to identify the
fakes.

ETA: Regarding comments along the lines of, "it's in their best interest to
let fake reviews continue as it boosts Amazon's sales."

I think this argument is getting a bit old, as Amazon's growing reputation for
fake reviews (and fake products) is turning off even mainstream shoppers and
giving a huge boost to big & small competitors.

Amazon now has a very big financial incentive to move beyond whack-a-mole and
truly tackle these problems, which requires A) doing at least as good as
Fakespot at identifying the bad actors and B) implementing technologies and
policies that discourage buying or posting fake reviews.

~~~
daveleebbc
Lack of effort? I wrote the FT piece referenced in CNBC's reporting, regarding
the 20,000 fake reviews. While the reviews have been taken down, there doesn't
seem to have been any repercussions for the companies. All the products are
still live... complete with other suspect reviews (just from users not
specifically highlighted by our report).

Amazon could do a lot more. I've just opened up Telegram to see what's
happening in the scam review groups today, and within seconds I can see that
this wifi range extender is being boosted by paid-for positive reviews:
[https://www.amazon.com/Extender-Wodgreat-Wireless-
Repeater-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Extender-Wodgreat-Wireless-Repeater-
Internet/dp/B07XKZRW9P)

(The 5-star reviews on that page confirm the theory).

If I can do that, on a Sunday morning, from my home... why isn't Amazon?

~~~
jjeaff
But you can't just remove products for fake reviews. Or else competitors will
buy fake reviews for their competitors products in order to get them delisted.

~~~
awinder
There’s a big jump from committing fraud for your own benefit and committing
fraud because it might mess your competitor up. I think you’d deal with a much
smaller problem, and, presumably one that companies would be on the lookout
for and aligned with Amazon on.

~~~
dylan604
committing fraud is committing fraud. if i'm on a jury, you get no less of a
sentence than if you bought the negative reviews.

~~~
awinder
I’m talking number of cases (how many people relatively would commit the 2
categories of crimes), not necessarily the severity of the crime. But I am now
kinda interested in flushing this out lol, Bernie Madoff and Martha Stewart
both committed securities fraud, yet served different sentences, but was this
ok in your world view?

~~~
dylan604
I don't know the particulars, so hard to say. You're probably wanting me to
say intent has bearing. Madoff intended to scam anybody as long as it helped
his situation along. Don't know what Stewart's intent was.

You buying positive reviews is intended to make more money for yourself by
getting as many sales as possible including if it means another seller doesn't
get that sale. The person buying negative reviews is intending to take sales
from others so they get the sales instead. Either way, the intent in both
situations is to increase one's own position at the expense of others in a
fraudulent manner. You're both just as guilty.

~~~
awinder
For the record, I don’t want you to say anything, I’m just trying to
understand where you’re coming from. No agenda with that particular choice,
just the first scenario that came to mind of same crime, different sentence.

I don’t understand why you need particulars if fraud is fraud though. They
both got difference sentences and did the same underlying crime. Why do we
sentence people differently, or is the view that we shouldnt be doing that?

~~~
dylan604
I don't have information on what Stewart did. It's as simple as that. I
honestly don't even know what Stewart did. I read up on Madoff. I care so
little about what Stewart does, I didn't follow it. Madoff was more
interesting to me, so I read more details on it.

------
mdorazio
This topic comes up quite frequently on HN. It boils down to the risk-reward
ratio. If you've never tried to sell anything on Amazon it's probably not
obvious how ridiculously important positive reviews are to your product sales.
I cannot overstate how important they are in the beginning, given the way your
average online shopper decides what to buy.

What this means is that sellers are faced with an absolute imperative to get
positive reviews at any cost, otherwise they die, while the flip side is that
_if_ they get caught manipulating reviews they maybe get de-listed and start
over again. This imbalance leads to exactly what you see now, and it at least
seems like as long as positive reviews are so important (in the absence of
curation) this will be an arms race.

~~~
AniseAbyss
Amazon feels to me just a place that continues to exist because of its name
recognition. Most of the stuff doesn't even come from Amazon's own warehouses
anymore.

~~~
sokoloff
I’d be surprised if less than 75% of gross merchandise sales don’t come from
Amazon FCs. I’d be incredibly surprised if it was less than 60%.

~~~
TAForObvReasons
I found out recently that there are actually a few levels of "Amazon Prime"
sales! The "Shipped and sold by Amazon" is what we normally expect, but
there's also "Fulfilled by Amazon" and a third tier that's effectively "Prime
Shipping" but is treated as a third-party seller. That third tier is
particularly deceptive because the sidebar display doesn't distinguish between
the second and third case but the return policies are very different.

~~~
sokoloff
That third category is “Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP)”.

If my orders from Amazon are in any way representative, SFP is _well under_
10% of volume (probably under 5%). I get way more non-Prime orders than SFP.

------
perl4ever
If all that's happening is fake good reviews and bots upvoting bad ones, it's
not a problem if you take the approach I do and think is the only correct one:

1\. Only read the bad reviews

2\. Ignore the fake or irrelevant bad reviews

3\. Ignore the good/bad ratio

Of course, if people are good enough at faking bad reviews, then there is a
problem, but I like to think I can tell, and it isn't something that is
practical to scale.

The whole idea of treating reviews as some sort of voting mechanism that
determines what you should buy makes no sense. The way I look at it is, is
there something non-obvious that is a dealbreaker? That's what reviews are
for.

If I was running an e-commerce site, I'd simply not allow good reviews at all.
Maybe have a sales counter that would serve to show how many people didn't
complain.

~~~
lashkari
I've taken the approach of only reading the 3-star reviews.

In most cases, a 3-star review will provide a pretty thorough assessment of
the pros and cons, and it's generally easier to determine the authenticity of
the review.

------
raphlinus
An ultra reliable query for scammy products is "1TB USB flash drive." This
product does exist in legit versions for about $200, but almost all of the
(relevant to the query; many are for smaller capacities) hits are scams in the
$30-40 price range. I believe these are mostly lower capacity thumb drives
that have been hacked to report 1TB; this tactic has high danger for data
corruption.

The fact that these listings are so easily gamed is to me a sign of something
seriously wrong at Amazon. I know from experience how hard the abuse problem
is (it was my job for a couple years at Google), but this should be Amazon's
bread and butter.

~~~
cnst
Can anyone explain why search is still broken on Amazon after so many years?!

Why do you get completely unrelated products, even though there should already
be plenty of relevant products?

Why is the option to _sort-by-price_ is more like _sort-by-random-order_?

~~~
srtjstjsj
"Sort-by-price" is "sort-by-price minus whatever arbitrary "shipping" fee the
seller put in to cheat the sort, with paid placements mixed in at the top,
bottom, and middle of every page".

------
satya71
Something I want from a store is curation. I want them to do the hard work of
evaluating whether the product is worthy of the customer's money. Amazon (also
copycats like Walmart) is failing at this basic task. That's why more of my
online dollars are going to Costco, Target, and others who do the work.

~~~
cnst
How's Target any different?

The issue is basically whether the store has opened up itself as the
marketplace for third-party-sellers, and how much they push these third-party
sellers compared to their own products.

It seems like Target may be more conservative with their Target Plus compared
to Walmart and Amazon. However, even Newegg and many other stores have gotten
on the third-party bandwagon.

~~~
satya71
Wait, I don't recall seeing third-party products on Target. When did that
change? I see some mention of it online, but cursory search for products
doesn't bring it up.

Edit: Looks like Target even hides that the product is third-party!

------
2bluesc
Not just fake reviews (where fake means no product was ever bought), but also
reimbursed 5-star reviews.

Instagram + Facebook are blasting sites like Rebatest[0] in my face for some
reason. I'm shocked Amazon lets such sites exist. I'm not opposed to people
asking for reviews, but insisting they are 5-star reviews seems terribly
unethical. Not surprisingly, they have a referral program as well...

Intrigued by this several hours earlier today, I signed-up because who
wouldn't want a reimbursement for a _good_ product they would have bought
otherwise? Let's see how this goes, low expectations.

Searching Google for "rebatest vs" naturally yields competitors Rebaid[1]

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

[1] [https://www.rebaid.com/](https://www.rebaid.com/)

~~~
axaxs
Yep. I've bought two things in the last week that each offer $15 for a five
star review. The weird thing is, both were truly great products, so there
wasn't an ethical dilemma for me, but it's kinda gross it exists.

------
hinkley
I have a weird selection mechanism for purchases. It’s not my only mechanism,
but it informs the decision. As much as I enjoy a well made item, what really
upsets me is something that should be much better than it is. Buyer’s remorse
is a huge issue for me.

So I look at the people who are panning it in their reviews. If they are
coherent and reasonable, I’m going to think twice about it. If they are
incoherent, shrill Karens, then everyone has those and it’s no big deal.

I do the same for development tools and libraries. It doesn’t catch
everything, and I may see their point but am willing to deal with a
consequence they couldn’t stomach. It does seem to help, especially with
biased reporting.

~~~
deepsun
Thanks for your feedback! We'll take a look at it, and improve our fake
comment generation algorithms.

~~~
hinkley
I should rephrase. It’s not the ratio of Karens it’s the quantity of people
with legitimate gripes. Flood with all caps as much as you want, Bob in Ohio
who couldn’t get them on the phone when his product caught on fire and burned
down his garage is going to have me asking a lot of questions.

------
crazygringo
It's funny -- a lot of products are 90% 5-star reviews, but nearly all the top
reviews on a page are 1-star (the ones that get voted up as "most helpful").

This actually seems to solve the problem. You read through a bunch of them,
and use your critical thinking to figure out if the problems are real are not.

Because the first couple are often just "this product broke after using it
once!" which you can just ignore, because that's always going to happen to
_somebody_ and for some reason people love to upvote it.

But then you'll either start to notice a theme, or not. If there's a theme (8
of the 10 top reviews complain that the handle breaks, or that it's not
compatible with Macs), then you can be pretty sure it's legitimate and
probably want to look for a different product. But if there isn't any theme
except "it broke immediately/arrived damaged" and then you start seeing
reviews where people are like "it works fine", then you're good.

I dunno, but that seems to work for me. So thank goodness Amazon has the
upvote button -- if it didn't it would make finding meaningful reviews a lot
harder.

~~~
sjtindell
Yeah along these lines one I’ve noticed a lot lately is “this thing doesn’t
fit like it used to” or “something has changed since March” where it is 90% 5
star like you said but the recent or most helpful reviews show something has
changed, that can be useful.

------
mschuster91
The "old analog" world has solved this problem long ago: Consumer review
magazines and NGOs (e.g. "Stiftung Warentest" in Germany) that review and rank
products on objectively measurable criteria, with dedicated niche magazines
(especially in computing) going on deep dives for reviews.

Why can't Amazon do it like Facebook and have a set of publicly trusted
reviewers organizations whose reviews are shown with a "trusted review" mark
and ranked higher?

Also: why can't regulators step in and demand that:

a) Amazon does not commingle inventory from different sellers to prevent
fraudulent product from entering the system and being "washed" in the process,
as well as provide end-to-end (from ingestion in the warehouse to the parcel
at delivery) for each and every product they ship

b) Amazon employees have to manually review changes to product descriptions,
varieties etc. so that "switch-a-roo" schemes where a vendor sells, let's say,
plant seeds and then shifts the product description to laptop chargers while
retaining the reviews.

 _This_ is the advantage that physical retail stores have: they at least know
what they are selling and that it is reasonably free from fraudulent product.

Amazon is the unregulated Wild West, and frankly this has to stop.

~~~
srtjstjsj
How do you which reviewers to trust?

How do you get reviews for the long tail?

~~~
mschuster91
> How do you which reviewers to trust?

That is up for Amazon to decide, but generally many countries already have
established organizations. It should not be that hard for Amazon to hire one
of the global market research networks to gather a suitable list.

> How do you get reviews for the long tail?

You mean for new products? Why not mandate that all products that are sold on
Amazon have to pass review by two or three of the trusted organizations as a
condition of listing?

------
mmhsieh
this might be part of the Return of the Brand.

friend working at Bose tells me: yeah, i know our IP is getting ripped off and
we are getting either outright faked or clone-faked; but we are confident that
people will continue to buy Bose because they trust the brand. brand loyalty
might cut through whatever consumer preferences are shaped by the likes of
reviews.

~~~
jsperson
OT, but The Bose brand does exactly the opposite for me. I bought a pair of
700 headphones, started having problems THEN read the forums. Ooh boy do they
need to work harder on the firmware. They can’t mute anything on Windows. This
is after the version that temporarily bricked thousands of headphones for
several months. Also support was abysmal.

I guess the brand advantage is that at least you know what you’re getting.

~~~
srtjstjsj
That's a side issue where a lot of good hardware companies never made a
successful jump to software-integrated products.

------
badrchoubai
A family member of mine recently ordered some wireless headphones, in the box
was a card asking for a 5-star review in exchange for another pair of the
headphones. They also ordered some school supplies with a similar offer in the
box.

~~~
sanitycheck
I've seen people post photos of these kind of messages along with their 5-star
reviews. Once I actually bothered to report it to Amazon (I was about to buy
the damn thing until I noticed the image.)

The customer support person seemed genuinely confused - the conversation went
back and forth a few times; "We can see that you haven't bought this product",
"No, but I'm reporting a problem", "We cannot give you a refund if you didn't
purchase it", "I don't want a refund, but this is apparently against your
seller ToS", etc. I gave up.

These days I won't buy anything from 3rd-party sellers, and I ignore all
5-star reviews.

------
dmalvarado
I've stopped judging a product on 5-star reviews. Between two products, I will
chose the product with the _least_ 1-star reviews. But obviously, this method
breaks down when a product only has 50 reviews. Also, I would expect a
somewhat normal distribution of reviews for a quality product. More 5s, than
4s, more 4s than 3s, etc.

4, 3 and 2 are where the most honest reviews are. High 1 count is indicative
of quality control issue. 5 star reviews is either a customer who was
immediately excited about product or a fake review.

------
jwdunne
I was looking for books on “dark psychology” (don’t, they’re garbage).

One book I found had great reviews. So good, in fact, two different verified
purchasers were compelled to write the exact same review verbatim.

I mean if you’re gonna write a book on “dark psychology”, make sure you don’t
screw up when you’re using it on your readers.

------
tmaly
I still think companies like Consumer Reports serve a valuable service at
least for bigger ticket items.

Fakespot it definitely useful and I use it quite a bit.

There seems to be a gap for lower priced items. I mean I don’t want to spend
all day pasting in urls into fakespot for a $10 item.

------
tempsy
I've just given up on buying anything from Amazon that isn't sold directly by
them or isn't a brand name I recognize. That eliminates a solid 80% of things
that I deem "eligible" to buy.

~~~
srtjstjsj
They'll still happily ship you commingled or counterfeit product in the
remaining 20%.

------
fortran77
Nearly every time I order things like small kitchen gadgets, barware, office
accessories/supplies, I get a card saying that if I write a 5-star review, and
send them a link to it, they'll send me a "free gift."

I suspect there are a lot of reviews like this that aren't 100% fake (they're
from different people who actually paid full price for the product) but are
solicited and therefore not accurate.

(I'll never review a product where the vendor makes an offer like this. I used
to report it to Amazon, but I don't think they care.)

~~~
srtjstjsj
You should write a 1-star review

~~~
fortran77
That wouldn't be ethical either.

------
Simulacra
There's a great app you can get called FakeSpot analyzes the reviews, and
provides some clarity to the reviews on Amazon, and Best Buy.

------
tmpz22
The scarey corollary is that all fake user-generated content is becoming
harder to spot, from Yelp reviews, Youtube comments, Tinder profiles, News
stories, Facebook posts, etc. And this is before the wide adoption of deep
fakes by these outfits.

------
switch11
People don't understand the whole reason behind fake reviews not being removed

Let's go through a series of questions

A) Will lower review ratings lead to less sales at Amazon or more sales at
Amazon?

B) will clear division between 'best in class' products and inferior products
give Amazon more monopoly control over the market, or less?

C) Will the difficulty in getting easy fake reviews get more people to jump
into selling things at Amazon or less?

 __ __ __

Amazon needs a Tragedy of the Commons type of situation

That more and more small businesses jump in, generate sales using fake
reviews, and give Amazon its cut

This in terms makes existing businesses smaller and more dependent on Amazon

They basically want 1 million companies each making $100,000 to $1 million a
year at Amazon

Commoditization, so whoever Pays Amazon the most, can be boosted

And these 'pay to play' businesses are INDISTINGUISHABLE from the actual best
businesses

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

Their aim is NOT

1) The best companies and the best products sell very well and get the best
reviews

2) Customers buy more and more of those products

3) Those companies (providing the best products) become bigger and bigger

Their aim is 'Glorification of the Mediocre' \- Commodification and
Mediocritization of EVERYTHING

1) Every company's products sell almost the same

2) Companies are dependent more and more on 'advertising' at Amazon

3) Amazon's cut becomes higher and higher

4) An end point where Amazon can take 50% to 75% of what customers pay

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Look at Audible and what terms they have there after becoming a monopoly

Same for ebooks where they are close to becoming a monopoly in US and UK

They first want 65% cut (if you don't give them exclusivity)

Then they want ebook and audiobook authors to spend out of their paltry 35%
cut - to advertise their product on Amazon

So they are, in effect, asking for a 75% to 90% cut of what customers pay

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

------
robotron
I've lost all trust in Amazon and competitors. I try to buy direct from the
company producing the product when I can. The shipping times aren't much
different. Maybe no same or next day.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Simple solution: combine it with ubiquitious social scoring, and make real
names/government issued IDs mandatory for any review. See the graph lighten up
with the fakers. Shun. Done.

------
gandalfian
The FT article that kicked off this flurry suggests a guy was making £5000 a
month from selling his free stuff. It must be an extreme example but with that
much temptation...

------
coronadisaster
I haven't bought fron Amazon in a couple months...Ebay is usually cheaper for
the stuff that needs to be bought online (or hard to find in stores).

------
Havoc
Yeah the only time it’s any use is on ebooks to determine roughly how popular
the book is. Ie review count rather than content

------
harshulpandav
I’m having this idea —

Amazon should allow only bad reviews or reviews that speak negative points
about a product. In addition to that amazon should show only the number of
purchases made.

Fake (paid) reviewers usually write good about the product to support sales

As a user after reading the description of the product i would be interested
to know where the product fails.

With this model, fake reviewers will have to write fake bad reviews on other
rival products which is expensive to do and easier to spot them based on
patterns.

------
RockmanX
funny, I thought AI/DL has been ready to save the world for a while since
everyone is bragging its power but until now Amazon still faces fake reviews
problem.

------
AniseAbyss
If you can't spot the difference are they really fake?

~~~
uniqueid
You _can_ spot the difference, _once you own the product_.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Sometimes you can't; you just get quietly poisoned or assume the real product
is bad.

------
techbio
Caveat Emptor - Buyer Beware

Nothing new under the sun.

------
paul7986
Ive always thought (noted here a bit ago) that the Internet needs a verified
government ID. Each time you use it to comment on Facebook or any website you
are helping verify the veracity of what your saying is true. If you don't use
it then what your saying is socially/culturally in question, which I think
either a minority or majority are already doing in terms believing what they
read on the Internet.

Of course I dont think anyone here likes the sound of the above, which i
thought of after seeing deepfakes videos (was downvoted heavily).

If downvoting love to understand the negatives of such a system?

~~~
brandon272
Government validated identification online sounds like pure hell to me and the
antithesis of an open and free internet, which is already under assault in
many different ways.

I don’t think that Amazon needs government backed identification to be able to
weed out fake reviews.

They could start by allowing only reviews from actual purchasers of the
product. (I assumed this was already a restriction they had in place, but I
just checked now and, of course, they appear to allow reviews from any
registered user).

They could also only allow reviews from accounts over a certain age or with a
minimum number of purchases or who have completed additional identity
validation, either themselves or through some other third party.

Point is, it’s not an insurmountable problem for them. It’s just either not a
priority or something they actively and intentionally do not wish to stop.

~~~
paul7986
Sure, but this idea was prompted after seeing deepfakes. What's another way to
fight the insanity and further erosion of veracity on the Internet/fight
deepfakes. You note and seem to agree there's an issue with it the Internet
too.

Also and as I note above it isn't anything you are mandated to use... only use
when you want to ensure veracity to what your saying, posting, publishing,
etc.

------
dvduval
Maybe I'll get down voted, but I think it's a legitimate question to ask: if
someone offers me a refund in exchange for my review, and the product would
benefit me, why shouldn't I accept it? Is it my duty to protect Amazon or
other consumers? Perhaps it's a small merchant trying to get started in the
face of big corporations doing other things to cheat the system (ex. pricing
out competition to capture the market). Could it be that I'm helping a small
business get started by getting a free product in exchange for a review?
There's no way to know for sure. But I can imagine that some people would
indeed take this offer and I don't necessarily blame them. Should I?

~~~
liability
> _Is it my duty to protect [...] other consumers? "_

Calling them 'consumers' rather than _' people'_ seems like a use of
dehumanizing language to assuage your guilt. At least, that's how it comes
across to me. When you accept a bribe for a review you're screwing over the
_living breathing human beings_ who might make the mistake of assuming you
aren't a liar.

------
strombofulous
I swear I see an article like this on HN at least once a month (actually,
according to
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=amazon&sort=byDate&type=story),
it's probably closer to about once a week) and the comments are always the
same, let me save you (the person reading this) some time and summarize what
these comments are going to look like:

> I've lost all faith in Amazon, now I use Walmart, where I get cheap junk but
> at least I know it's real cheap junk

> Amazon has so much data! How have they failed so hard to stop this?

> I swear I see this type of article posted every other week on HN

> I was recently hit by this! They even shipped it in totally real looking
> packing and outer shell, but the serial number wasn't valid/the company
> selling it had no record of my purchase/when I dropped it and the casing
> popped open I could see it was not authentic/etc

> This is largely because of comingling

> Check out fakespot/reviewmeta, they can analyze the comments and tell you
> which ones are fake

> This is Amazon's fault for making reviews so important for the seller

~~~
gilrain
You forgot to make a point...

