
Amazon's Fake Review Problem - doglet
http://www.brianbien.com/amazons-fake-review-problem/
======
jacek
The fake review problem on Amazon is much bigger than people think. Here are
my two anecdotes:

1\. I got bluetooth headphones on amazon (~$65). They had great reviews, but
were very disappointing. I returned them and gave 2 star review.
Representative from the manufacturer contacted me and offered me a pair for
free. After I got them, they asked for positive review. I refused. That
manipulation technique wasn't enough for them though. They might have merged
the listing with some other item. Even though the item was released this year,
it has reviews from 2014.

2\. When I need a cable or something similar, I go to a page like vipon.com .
They offer huge discounts on some items on amazon (sometimes even -80%). They
of course "suggest" leaving a review.

The more I look at reviews, the less I trust them. I see similar patterns for
most products on amazon.

~~~
rconti
Huh. I've never really had an issue because I chalked it up more to people
buying cheap crap and expecting it to be good. But $65 for a pair of
headphones isn't exactly cheap. Was it a familiar brand but maybe a
counterfeit? Or was it a brand you've never heard of, but the price is
justified by very positive reviews? I'm curious.

~~~
catdog
Headphones seem to be a very strange category in general. You can get
exceptional good value for money if you know what to buy and on the other hand
pay a lot for utter crap.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
Listening is extremely subjective though. Headphone types can be better /
worse for certain listening habits (there are people out there who don't think
great bass makes great music, folks), and for different ears. Music taste
itself is extremely subjective. Best thing is still to get to a trusted hifi
store nearby with your own, known music in best quality and your current best
headphone model and test through candidate models yourself. (Admittedly, I'd
still read some reviews before investing a few hundred dollars into
headphones.)

~~~
ethbro
My current earbud benchmark is the Panasonic ErgoFit line. [1]

To be fair, I don't use an external DAC or source high quality sound on the
road.

But for $10 and tolerable, good enough for travel.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E4LGVUO/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00E4LGVUO/)

~~~
DanielleMolloy
Can confirm - for everyday in-ears, these Panasonic in-ears are indeed good
and durable.

Cheap but surprisingly good end: Superlux HD668B (20-40$, as they got popular
you may need to watch out for counterfeits). IMHO they are on par with some
popular 200$ - 300$ Beyerdynamic / Sennheiser / AKG models. You may want to
follow one of the online guides to replace the ear cup plastic with velour.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Expensive end: AudioQuest Nighthawk, 1st model. Their sound is unique and
"purist audiophiles" may not like it, but they work pretty well with my
listening habits; the experience has been pure joy so far and they are very
comfortable.

Fakespot: A (90%)

Listening habits: Metal (symphonic-, power-, progressive-, i.e. complex and
with classical music elements; e.g. Blind Guardian) and some Depeche Mode

------
maxxxxx
Amazon is starting to feel more and more like eBay. The same product sold by
multiple vendors under different names, questionable reviews, clearly
fraudulent sellers and so on.

I used to love Amazon but now when I look for something I dread to do so on
Amazon because I don't feel I can trust anything there.

~~~
ajmurmann
I wish that Amazon could split the market place off. I disliked it from the
first day they introduced it. I want to buy from Amazon not some company I've
never heard of.

It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most
users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.

~~~
jlarocco
> It's if course never gonna happen. It's too convenient for Amazon and most
> users probably don't even understand that they aren't buying from Amazon.

Out of curiosity, why do you assume people don't realize they aren't buying
from Amazon?

~~~
pjc50
Why would people think they're _not_ buying from Amazon when they're on the
Amazon web site and their credit card gets billed to Amazon?

(Can't remember, but do the parcels come in Amazon packaging too?)

~~~
jlarocco
> Why would people think they're not buying from Amazon when they're on the
> Amazon web site and their credit card gets billed to Amazon?

Because Amazon tells them when they're looking at the item that it's sold by a
third party? And then again when they're checking out. And the items sold by
third parties include an invoice and receipt from the third party? It's not a
difficult technical issue - it only requires basic reading comprehension,
which I'd expect most people using Amazon to posses.

Obviously everybody commenting here has figured out what's going on, and most
people I've talked to about it (technical and non-technical) have also figured
it out, so I just can't see it as Amazon tricking everybody.

My assumption is that _most_ people buying from Amazon _do_ know about and
understand third party sellers, but aren't bothered by them enough to do
anything.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think most people assume that there is some level of quality control of
third party suppliers.

------
danbower
Well the situation does seem quite bad when you see people who leave fake
reviews become brazen enough to actually advertise their services on Amazon
itself [1]. I reported this review about 10 days ago and it's still up. The
email address provided appears on hundreds of product listings [2]. When they
can't even filter out nonsense like this I can only assume they put zero
effort into tackling fake reviews.

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-
reviews/R7J38CTD1MNT0](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-
reviews/R7J38CTD1MNT0)

[2]
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:amazon.co.uk+sohant85...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:amazon.co.uk+sohant855%40gmail.com)

~~~
Theodores
...this is sad in the instance you describe because the actual seller did not
request that 'advert for reviews' and it now marks their product as 'fake'.
Yet the actual seller is legit and doing a great job according to 'fakespot'.
Sample listing:

[https://www.fakespot.com/company/ketdirect](https://www.fakespot.com/company/ketdirect)

------
miles_matthias
Here's my anecdote: my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most
of the people who review her books. FakeSpot gave her most popular book an F
grade because people were "suspiciously positive".

Most people leaving reviews only leave reviews for things they absolutely
love, so saying that it's "suspiciously positive" is not an indicator of it
being fake.

In her case, she knows these people personally and they're not fake scripts.
Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is
completely wrong.

tldr; spotting fake reviews is harder than it seems apparently.

EDIT: the other thing is that she has lost quite a bit of legitimate reviews
from Amazon deleting them. Amazon is actually doing more than the end user
sees about this problem.

EDIT 2: Another thing Amazon completely ignores are reviewers who get an early
copy of the product in exchange for an honest review. This is how a lot of
people kickstart reviews on their products and Amazon completely ignores that
valid use case. In fact, they hurt it because they don't mark those reviews as
"Verified Purchase" since the reviewer got the product outside of the Amazon
channels. They need to come up with a system for this.

~~~
Someone1234
> my wife is an author on Amazon and personally knows most of the people who
> review her books.

So your wife has people she knows leave positive reviews in order to bump her
book's review score and you're upset that Fakespot gave it an F due to them
being non-organic reviews?

As a consumer it sounds like Fakespot is doing a great job, and exactly what
it states on the tin. What your wife is doing is at best dishonest and I'm
glad they're exposed as sham reviews. Hopefully these people are putting a
disclaimer in the reviews stating the conflict but I highly doubt it.

> Yet FakeSpot, who OP holds up as doing the great job that Amazon is not, is
> completely wrong.

Except according to your own anecdote they were completely right?

~~~
threatofrain
I would also call this dishonesty, but I wouldn't be too hard on someone for
this. Asking someone to not do this is like asking someone to do honest
advertisements. It's asking someone to uphold an ethical standard that the
majority neglects.

A little bit of moderated moral pushback has its place, but I think the main
solution at societal-scale must be structural.

~~~
Someone1234
I actually agree, I'd be lying if I wouldn't leave a positive review if my
spouse or friend wrote a book. Problem is the person above said "Yet FakeSpot
[...] is completely wrong." and criticized Fakespot for pointing out the
problematic reviews.

They say that everyone is a hero in their own story, and I think that applies
here, you have good personal motivations (help a friend/spouse/family, etc)
but ultimately what you're doing is no different from the consumer's
perspective than the people that do this stuff professionally. It is just as
immoral/misleading/dishonest.

They get upset with a service (Fakespot) which points out the bad behavior
because it contrasts with their moral motivations for doing so. I think they
need to re-examine right and wrong in this situation, Fakespot may not be the
bad guy here.

~~~
Malician
I mean, I'm just suspicious. Fakespot seems to say the reviews are dishonest,
fake, overly positive for.. well, a lot of things, including my favorite pair
of headphones.

They're positive because the headphones are utterly fantastic. They beat the
crap out of the better-reviewed (on Amazon) Bose version. Which Fakespot gives
a better grade to.

~~~
drukenemo
Got curious. Could you share the brand and model? Thanks.

------
jseliger
I don't care much about the reviews, but I care a lot about the fake / phony /
not-as-described merchandise: [http://seliger.com/2017/01/09/tools-continued-
careful-buy-am...](http://seliger.com/2017/01/09/tools-continued-careful-buy-
amazon/) . I've actually changed behavior and tried harder to buy from the
original maker, if possible.

~~~
mjevans
That's the behavior that I would like to see Amazon encourage as a solution.

Tracking the product back to it's actual origin of manufacturer (and showing
us the consumer).

Where, exactly, was the factory? The lot number and date of manufacturer?
Official model and revision number?

Requiring these things will give buyers better hard data to detect and exclude
middle-level-marking shenanigans as well as combat 'bait and switch' (even if
not intentional) changes to product configurations sold under the same general
marketing moniker.

~~~
pwaai
How would you go about tracing the steps? Are there some large database of OEM
factories where you can contact them in English (assuming China).

I too would love to know _exactly_ where and who made it, how many middle-men
have stepped in with their own markup to finally Amazon.

Because it's clear that Amazon doesn't give two shit about who and what gets
sold, they just care about volume. Fixing reviews is not part of that
strategy.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
With great difficulty.

Most major brands never even touch their products. They design them and have
them built by contract manufacturers. They then get sent through distributors,
shippers, brokers, etc. Each of which has terribly old systems which may or
may not track each individual item.

Most links in this chain are also disinterested in any third party knowing
what and how many products they move, including and especially the brand
itself.

~~~
astura
I think your last paragraph is absolutely key - many players treat that
information as strictly proprietary. A big reason is because oftentimes a
supplier makes identical (other than the packaging) products for two different
customers, one sold as generic, one name brand.

------
corvallis
I am much more wary about buying from Amazon than most of my peers, who easily
click and buy on a whim or out of habit. I went to buy a toy at a brick and
mortar, and compared the price to Amazon while there - $12.99 in the store and
$27.xx at Amazon! I think they've marketed them to be the low price leaders
but that's definitely not the case.

I'm also concerned about counterfeit products - I don't care as much about
reviews because I'll usually have researched beforehand or already know what I
want. However with brand name items, I always wonder if it's the real thing
and as a result have stopped buying shoes, etc from Amazon. I also don't buy
anything from Amazon that goes in my body or on my body (supplements,
cosmetics/hygiene, etc). I stick with brick & mortar or the online storefront.

It's unfortunate, because Amazon is fantastic as a concept, unfortunately my
trust in them does not extend to most items. I'd rather pay more and be
confident in the product. I think whatever they are doing is working for them
and they have no incentive to change because the vast majority of customers
are not so discerning.

~~~
thisisit
This is happening because people now _assume_ Amazon's prices are the best -
always. But, that is not the case. There are times where people are knowingly
listing a product about market prices to catch people who are caught unaware.

Once upon a time, I bought two boxes of Ener-G. It was only later I found out
I have paid 100% markup on those boxes. I felt stupid that I hadn't verified
the prices on the manufacturer's site.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
People also do this with drop shipping.

They'll scrape products from X and list them on Y for cost+markup then drop
ship. Even if they use thin margins coupon codes and promotions from a
customer rewards program do a lot of offset the occasional return that you
can't pass up the line or order that happens after a price hike but before
your scraping software can catch up.

If you have a discount you can use that to undercut your competition and
appear high up when people sort by price. You get a X% coupon code for some
product from Y then scrape Y's online store and relist it on Z for retail less
X plus your margin and costs. Fraudulently purchased gift cards can also be
monetized through web scraping and drop shipping.

When the cost difference is negligible I prefer to buy from drop shippers
rather than have my payment info and PII sitting around in yet another
database waiting to be stolen.

------
slackingoff2017
The problem is massive. Most people haven't noticed yet but it's only a matter
of time. Eventually everyone gets burned at least once and Amazon becomes the
new ebay.

They need to get a handle on their supply chain and stop outsourcing so much
of their product listings to shady third party sellers. Shady third party
sellers go hand-in-hand with fake reviews. Most reputable brands don't want to
get their hands dirty with that stuff. It's guys making margin on reselling
that have all the skin in the game and most of the incentive to manipulate the
system.

I've never gotten a fake from any brick and mortar or online merchant that
sells direct. Only places I've gotten fakes and been duped by rampant fake
reviews are eBay and Amazon. Once a competitor gets their shit together (I'm
betting on Walmart) and has an equally convenient online store, Amazon will be
the Myspace of online sales.

People have loyatly to brands but not the company that sells them. If
something better comes along I'll switch immediately just like I did years ago
with ebay

~~~
emh68
I've actually recently gotten a fake from Macys.com, so it seems to me that
sites like Amazon and eBay are saturated with fakes, and the scammers are
infiltrating supply chains in general. (They refused to accept the return,
however, so I don't think the problem is that widespread, or maybe they're
just not aware of the issue yet.)

This might be brick & mortar's last laugh. How do you protect against fake
merchandise? Don't worry about it, customers simply won't buy the obviously
incorrect items, and you can identify and deal with them when you take
inventory.

~~~
astura
What was the product, if you don't mind sharing.

~~~
emh68
Clothing item. I received a really cheap item by the same manufacturer, with a
tag jammed into it identifying it as the higher-priced item.

------
jccooper
Social proof via reviews (of products, restaurants, anything) is a great idea
if you can assume good intent. Back in the good ol' days of the Internet this
seemed plausible for some reason, but now there's real money to be made and
that's out the window.

Amazon and Yelp and the like may be better or worse at stemming the tide of
fakery, but asking them to be better isn't going to fundamentally help. The
whole idea is broken.

~~~
mc32
I wonder if it will come back to a more distributed CR type of system. Also
branding and maintaining the integrity of a brand.

Currently you have a bevvy of brands for China sourced goods. The brands are
obviously made up without much thought. Something like "Scarvast" trekking
pole. "Vargus" flashlights, "Zukil" wireless speakers. "Brikor" dehumidifiers.

And often times the same seller will have multiple "brands". This is what
makes it unreliable and untrustworthy. It's like they live A/B test products
on AMZ.

~~~
pogue
I highly recommend a 30 Day trial subscription on Consumer Reports (CR) online
if you're looking to buy a big ticket item. You can put in your CC# & other
details and get free 30 day access to CR testing of a lot of products. Then
cancel before the 30 days are up. You may end up paying a little more for a
top notch product, but you can be assured if CR reviewed it, you're getting
what you pay for.

~~~
doglet
Maybe there's a market for verified customer reviews of popular items - even
ones that aren't big ticket. Consumer Reports might grow to cover additional
items and perhaps develop a browser extension for subscribers who gain access
to trusted reviews.

------
xellisx
I usually look at the 1 star reviews first and see if the complaints are user
error, unreal expectations or really a poorly designed product.

~~~
stri8ed
I don't know that this solves the problem, since competitors can just start
leaving fake negative reviews on competing products.

~~~
xellisx
While that is true, if it's a low effort 1 star review, E.g. "It's crap", with
no explanation of why it's crap, I ignore that. If there's a lengthy 1 star
review with details, then I factor that in to "Was that one just bad, or all
them are like that". I don't just look at the 1 stars, I work my way up. More
details for me equal a higher weighted review. Pictures, video and stuff help
too, but of course those can be faked. Lately I've been looking at audio
equipment for S&Gs (Microphones, audio interfaces, phantom power injection,
etc...).

------
perseusprime11
This is not just Amazon’s problem. App store ratings, Reddit comments,
Twitter/FB feeds, and Net Neutrality comments are all gamed. We are living in
the age of human controlled bots looking to manipulate other humans through
what we read.

~~~
mathgenius
Yeah, these are all "message passing" algorithms, like belief propagation. The
whole financial system itself is another good example of this.

~~~
perseusprime11
I hope Hacker News will be the last bastion for fake comments. At least, I
have never seen bots lurking around on Hacker News.

------
m3kw9
Generally I always go to review sites first like wire cutter to see what are
the best stuff, then I would see the little details, mostly what bad reviews
say about it to contradict. A lot good reviews I can sniff out as fluff with a
5 star label. The bad thing is that when I see an avg of 4.5 stars with 100+
reviews, there is a slight bias inside me for this product. Amazon could do a
better job to weight the avg stars.

~~~
slantyyz
Well, you even have to take the Wirecutter with a grain of salt. IIRC, there
was some heated debate over whether they were pay to play from some standing
desk co that didn't sell through Amazon (Wirecutter makes a portion of their
revenue from amazon referral links).

------
ad_hominem
If Amazon starts penalizing products for fake reviews then it's probably just
a matter of time until that's weaponized by competitors to tank competing
products. Then I imagine Amazon will have to come out with a "disavow review"
tool similar to Google's disavow backlinks (to counteract targeted negative
SEO).

~~~
r00fus
What's to say that isn't happening now? Seen quite a lot of pseudo positive
reviews that are simply advising reader that "another product is better"

~~~
j-c-hewitt
It is happening now in fairly large quantities.

------
sputknick
I tried to buy my son a remote control car on Amazon a few weeks ago. I gave
up after wading through 2 pages of 5 star reviewed products where the reviews
all looked the same, all had the same structure. Many referenced "my 11 year
old son", or the name of the company. This seems like something that can be
weeded out using ML sentiment analysis. If too many reviews have the same
structure, your posting gets demoted. If I could have found one legit looking
review I would have bought that car, instead I gave up and went to The hobby
store.

~~~
doglet
Nothing like the good old trusted hobby store. And yes, this repetition of
phrase or structure should be a clear signal.

------
KeepTalking
Fake reviews? I received a firkin fake Bose QC-35 II Headphone! Check out the
fake product and read the reviews, and this listing is still active even after
Amazon verified and refunded me the cost of the product.

[https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-headphones-
Bluetoot...](https://www.amazon.com/Bose-QuietComfort-headphones-Bluetooth-
NFC-Black/dp/B01L92BERK#customerReviews)

Infact one of the reviewers did a detail comparison between the fake product
and the real QC-35.

~~~
hippich
This is very different issue. Amazon, unlike eBay, has single product page for
product. And multiple sellers can sell under that page. Including sellers of
counterfeit. This does not make original product bad (so reviews are
incorrect) - but rather seller should be reported.

Granted - that concept is very complicated for typical amazon shopper and
that's how you end up with bunch of "fake" 1-star reviews under brand-names
products...

~~~
emh68
That isn't the issue mentioned by OP.

------
amai
[https://reviewmeta.com/](https://reviewmeta.com/) and
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/) can help.

------
ausjke
There are groups that do both: buying the first batches of products and
writing nice reviews, then the seller will pay for what they have done, it's a
mature business these days: you hire a team to market you at Amazon by faking
reviews after "real" purchases(will be compensated or rewarded under the
counter afterwards). This is very hard to detect indeed.

Maybe Amazon can have some AI algorithm, that is for any newly arrived
products with non-sales yet, monitoring the activities on them closely,the
fake purchase and review must have some common pattern(same address, same ID,
same IP,etc).

But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.

So yes, customers will be the one got screwed up no matter what.

~~~
anthuswilliams

      But then, why does Amazon want to do that? it will decrease its own profit.
    

Why would policing fake reviews decrease Amazon's profits?

~~~
Spivak
Presumably because positive reviews cause people to buy products, they don't
necessarily blame Amazon if they turn out to be bad, nor do they return them.

------
gesman
>> Amazon – who has some of the world’s most advanced ML – really needs to
step up its review fraud detection game.

It's not in the interests of Amazon to be on a crusade against fake reviews.
Mass fake reviews are the driving force of revenues.

AMZN will always maintain the balance between public outcry and absolute
minimal effort to show that they're doing something against spammers.

From my side I maintain the right to buy the product and then write "not as
described" as a reason for free return for full refund with free pickup.

Quite often vendor/seller will give you refund without requiring you to return
merchandise.

I don't feel like I been abused too much by fake reviews as long as I can
"abuse back" with my free return.

~~~
brianpan
I don't understand your argument. How do reviews drive revenues? If all fake
reviews were taken down, wouldn't buy less stuff from Amazon.

~~~
maksimum
Many people look at # of reviews and average review as "social proof" about
the quality of a product. The reason we do this is because it can be a useful
short-cut to performing an intellectually rigorous evaluation. If Amazon
removes a bunch of reviews they're removing incentives that users use to buy
products.

~~~
Terretta
No. You’re at Amazon.com, you will make a purchase.

Reviews affect which purchase.

The incentive that matters is the sentiment or belief you should go to
amazon.com in the first place. That’s what’s at risk.

------
JohnTHaller
Amazon has a habit of removing reviews if they contain words like counterfeit.
This is likely due to the issue of counterfeit items on Amazon and
intermingling of goods between vendors including Amazon itself.

------
propman
I briefly considered offering a curated review service for Amazon many years
back (I know it's unethical and it was just posturing) and was not surprised
to find many services already offering that.

I thought Millennials had become desensitized to all 5 star over the top, big
flashy sounding reviews so a service that carefully curates reviews for top
items seemed like a decent idea. Sprinkle a few 1 star reviews for the wrong
item sent or a fault of Amazon, a few 4 stars raving about the product but
complaining about some minor aspect irrelevant to the average buyer to make it
sound authentic. Many people compare a few products and when they make a
purchase, they do so feeling really proud of themselves that they picked the
perfect product for the best price. The "it's too good to be true" doesn't
really seem to work anymore. This honestly seems to be the case for every
Amazon product these days. We'll probabzky get desensitized to this soon too
and something else will come up.

That said, fake products are ridiculous and there are a few sites I've
bookmarked that do a pretty decent job of spotting a fake product and I do
admit it's becoming harder to differentiate lately but the too good to be true
adage still stands.

------
awinder
I got scammed on some hdmi cables and iPhone charging cables a few months
back. They all broke within a month, which I thought was weird, definitely the
worst purchases I’ve made on amazon but they were top reviewed products on the
front page of a search.

I just checked them on fakespot and they were both rated at 98% fake reviews.
This is pretty confidence shattering for me; how do I pay $80 a year for prime
if amazon is in cahoots with such obvious scams...

------
FabHK
Reminds me of Goodhart's Law:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

~~~
WhoIsSatoshi
When you see this start to happen to Bitcoin, that's when you sell and buy
ethereum (or other secondary crypto!)

------
intopieces
Amazon's solution to fake reviews is Amazon Basics, a "verified good" version
of whatever you were looking for. Thus, they have little incentive to combat
fake reviews for products not directly sold by them, since that bad
experience, they hope, will cause you to run back to them for the product next
time.

They also get to avoid being called a monopoly by selling products of various
qualities and from various sellers.

~~~
doglet
Interestingly, Amazon might have a secondary payoff here: they actually get
some good ground truth (honest review data) since these reviews - at least the
positive ones - aren't tainted by the same incentives.

------
apinstein
I am finding myself more and more suspicious of buying from Amazon. I have had
issues with fake reviews, disclarity over the actual vendor/source of an item,
particularly due to their mixed logistics system. It’s scary how many 1-Star
reviews are clearly from people who’ve gotten a fake / different product than
what’s listed. I am close to done with buying from Amazon.

------
Nition
The fake review problem is clearly bad, but if it's going to take some fancy
machine learning algorithm to solve it, why not start with a simpler
improvement to user reviews: Weighting the Top Rated scores so it doesn't show
an item with a single 5-star review above an item with 5000 reviews and a 4.9
star average.

~~~
EvilTerran
Amen to that. It's a solved problem in statistics, too:

[https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-
rating...](https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html)

------
doglet
Should we conclude that Amazon does not have sufficient incentive to remove
these fake reviews? Surely they could, when third-party sites easily detect
them...

~~~
pishpash
Third-party sites are not "easily" detecting them. They have no idea what the
performance of their "detection" is, in either direction (false +, false -).

~~~
doglet
One problem is getting "ground truth." I think Amazon has a pretty good idea
of a lot of near-certain true positives.

------
kelukelugames
I worked at Amazon as an intern in 2005 and recall a talk on fake reviews.
There were groups of people who wrote fake positive reviews for each other's
books. Today I have friends who sell on Amazon and they write fake reviews for
each other's products.

~~~
pishpash
People give fake reviews all the time in other circumstances (e.g. at work,
reviewing papers). Human nature really can't be changed. You just have to keep
your skepticism and read critically.

~~~
jonnycomputer
I don't know anyone who has given a fake review on a paper. Could happen. I do
know that reviewing papers can be a royal time suck on people who don't really
have a lot of time to spare.

------
rdlecler1
Amazon reviews system is broken. It seems to favor the cheapest functional
product but not everyone wants to buy the cheapest thing. Sometimes they want
the best quality item and it’s hard to interpolate this from the review
system. Reviews really need to be weighted to the kinds of purchases people
make. Someone buying the top of the line OLED TV is going to have a different
set of preferences than someone who is buying a no-name 65” LCD.

~~~
grapeshot
With TVs and computer parts it becomes impossible to read the reviews because
they are merged with every other variation of that product from the same
brand, with wildly different features and quality levels. Look up LG monitors
or eVGA power supplies for instance.

------
z3t4
I try to do my purchase's based on scientific research methods. There needs to
be benchmarks that you can use to compare the products. That is however
problematic for some products, such as books.

What's even worse then fake reviews is fake bad reviews where competitors give
your products a low rating. If your first review ends up bad you are screwed,
unless you get 100 good reviews to compensate.

------
Finnucane
If they're not going to do anything about fake stuff, why should they care
about fake reviews? As it is, they're trying to make it so you don't know what
you're buying or who you're buying it from, or even be entirely sure what the
price is going to be, or who is going to be delivering to your door, so why
should they care about reviews?

~~~
pishpash
You have a problem they'll shower $ on you. As long as Amazon does that,
people seem to accept it.

------
sogen
I rated a book poorly (1-2 stars). This book only had 3 reviews after one year
since it was published.

Crazily enough, after my review appeared, two days later this book had over
TWELVE glowing reviews, all of them Five-stars

...

------
TheAceOfHearts
It's not perfect, but I've been using Fakespot [0] for all my Amazon
purchases. It helps filter down the info a bit, which makes it easier to make
decisions.

Honestly, I think what we need is a Consumer Report reboot. I signed up for a
subscription recently, and was very disappointed with their service, although
I still like idea behind it.

I'm often overwhelmed by the huge number of options, and it can be incredibly
challenging to narrow the number down, even for everyday purchases. Heck,
sometimes you have two options and no easy way of differentiating between em,
like with generic vs brand over-the-counter medicine. Unfortunately, now-a-
days trying to do any kind of research is most likely to pull up fake or
questionable info from paid shills. I wonder how feasible it would be to
create a decentralized chain of trust for product and service reviews.

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

~~~
pwaai
what did you find disappointing about it? First time I heard about it, what is
it they do that's worth subscribing?

On researching, yeah it's honestly a _chore_ everytime because so much
disinformation/misinformation.

I'm not sure what decentralization would look like or even make sense. It
seems like you just need some central guy like CR to vet and test out all the
products. I go to Youtube for that tho.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
Well, I'd had access to their physical catalogues when I was younger through
my parents' subscription, so I had good memories of their reviews.

Their site has TONS of tracking and marketing scripts, which I consider anti-
user. Furthermore, if you block or disable any, the site breaks. For a service
claiming to be pro-user they seem to be engaging in a lot of dark patterns.

Aside from that, I found their reviews lacking in detail. For many categories
they have dozens of options marked as recommended, with prices ranging from
hundreds to thousands of dollars, but no explanation of why one might prefer
certain models. I subscribed because I wanted help narrowing down my options.

I wouldn't suggest subscribing for more than a single month. They have some
useful information, but not enough to justify a long-term subscription.

~~~
pwaai
What would the perfect thing look like for helping you narrow down your
options?

And if it was successful in helping you make informed consumer decisions,
would it be something you'd come back for again and again?

Lately, I'm super passionate and vocal about protecting consumers rights. I've
been disenfranchised and powerless to act against shady business practices.
I've been threatened for leaving negative reviews on purchases. Lawyers only
go after high profile high payout cases. Local media seems to be in bed with
corporate sponsors.

------
ouid
They don't try to solve this problem at all. I was looking for a cheap macbook
charger, and ran across two very different products with identical reviews,
spelling mistakes and all. I'm sure this is common, even. How hard would it be
to automatically detect this behavior?

------
enraged_camel
Solving the fake review problem might be possible if Amazon takes steps to
make it economically unfeasible for the bad actors to do it at scale.

For example, let's say that each product is shipped with a unique review_id
and that review_id is tied to the product. When posting reviews about said
product, you need to provide a picture of the card that contains the
review_id. This would need to be verified server-side before the review is
accepted.

IMO this would make it too difficult for vendors to buy fake reviews at
volume, since each fake review now must go through the extra step of taking a
picture of the review_id card and uploading it along with the review. Since
that step would take place in the analog world it would defeat most automated
review posting methods.

------
shahbaby
Recently I've avoided buying certain things just because I didn't want to put
in the time to do my own research on it.

I would rather not buy it than take the risk of getting ripped off buy a fake
review.

Some things are worth the money but not the time.

------
billyvg
I encountered this problem while trying to do Christmas shopping on Amazon. An
example is this (parachute hammocks):
[https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias...](https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=parachute+hammock)

I don't know anything about them, I'm not familiar with manufacturers, but
this search result brings up very similar items from "different" companies.
What's even more suspicious is that there are MULTIPLE results that have 1-2
thousand reviews and are at a perfect 5*.

~~~
maltalex
Try this: [https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

~~~
supermdguy
This looks really cool.

------
bsg75
How much of this problem would be eliminated if Amazon only allowed reviews
from accounts that purchased that item?

~~~
slantyyz
Zero. Because the workaround is that reviewers are asked to buy the products
with their own money and then reimbursed via Paypal.

Source: I used to do incentivized reviews but stopped after the rule changes.
I still get asked to do the Paypal workaround.

In fact, the old system was better. At least the incentivized review
disclosures let you know to take a review with a grain of salt. Now, it's even
shadier.

------
baxtr
I’m starting to think that amazon might be in trouble, because of

A. Fake reviews, see above

B. Fake products [1]

C. A growing organization, which will be slower and less like on “day 1” [2]

So far, all of this has not affected their top line, but maybe will change
soon.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12743316)

[2] [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-soars-340k-employees-
ad...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-soars-340k-employees-
adding-110k-people-single-year/)

------
dheera
For me, I only look at a review if it states at least one or two non-trivial
_negative_ aspects of the product. That alone weeds out a lot of fake reviews.

Most honest reviews are never 100% positive.

~~~
alok-g
Yes. Even if it mentions some "non-trivial" positive aspects, it still helps.

------
rebootthesystem
Amazon has the power to fix this. They don't seem to care. Simple logic and
heuristics would be enough.

Amazon allows anyone to post a review. You don't even have to buy the product.
That is fundamentally wrong.

That's the first easy step: If you did not buy the product on Amazon you
cannot post a review.

Amazon allows people who receive deep discounts to post reviews. That is ripe
for manipulation.

And so, the second filter is simple: If someone doesn't pay at least N%, say
50%, for a product they don't get to post a review.

Amazon allows people to post a review at any time, even before the product
ships. You can post a review for toothpaste before you actually use it.

The third filter would include a variable purchase-to-review period. The
length of this period is different depending on the type of product. Maybe
someone who buys a USB cable can post a review a couple of weeks after
actually receiving it --but not sooner. Someone buying weight loss pills might
need to wait 60 days.

In other words, introduce some common sense into a process that would only
allow actual retail buyers of a product to experience the product for a
reasonable amount of time before allowing them to post a review, positive or
negative.

It goes beyond that. Negative reviews need to be routed to the vendor before
they appear publicly on Amazon. Why? Amazon needs to give vendors a first shot
at solving the problem. The current system is moronic. People can give a USB
cable a bad review because they don't like the color. The thing might work
just fine but the person wanted a different shade of green and can give the
product a 1 star review. This is nonsense.

In general terms, Amazon reviews, due to Amazon's own incompetence, are pretty
much worthless these days.

------
akshaypuradkar
i had a friend who worked at a place whose owners had a forum board(or perhaps
many) and the employees working there were supposed to

1\. search shit up the internet. this could be any random stuff. electronics
to politics to plain BS. 2\. start a thread by logging into one of the board
accounts by literally copy pasting the stuff they chose to select based on
some criteria. 3\. reply the question from different accounts(all taken from a
pool), usually more copy pasted shit. 4\. copy-paste all that into some
document and submit it as a worklog to the management.

i think the source of income was advertisement(what else could support such a
thing?). what i found fascinating was that this cottage industry somehow
managed to pay middle-class salaries to about 20 odd employees in a place like
suburban mumbai by siphoning money from a burgeoning advertising industry and
doing nothing of any value whatsoever. i guess this is what Friedman really
meant by a free market. stupidity begets stupidity!

the point being, it's become really difficult to figure what's of value in
this weird weird world!

------
barking
I was surprised to see that possibly the best vb6 book ever written, which has
96 reviews on amazon.com, is scored an F by fakespot

[https://www.fakespot.com/product/programming-microsoft-
visua...](https://www.fakespot.com/product/programming-microsoft-visual-
basic-6-0-80322ea5-2da7-410c-9777-704d5f97695a)

~~~
jasonlotito
I searched a few more well known and popular books (ones that HN would
recommend) and they all come back with nothing better than a C. This doesn't
instill much confidence in me.

------
thisisit
It seems Amazon is in a bind. While we will like to believe the extensions
which can sniff out fake reviews, they don't have the burden of false
positives - reviews which are genuine but marked as fake.

Imagine, what happens if Amazon does incorporate a stricter review guideline
and lot of the reviews get tossed. It will be Youtube demonistation debate all
over again.

------
j-c-hewitt
Amazon does do a lot to detect bribed reviews automatically. However, in the
long run, this may be an arms race that Amazon will lose.

One issue with detecting fakes with identical phrases is that many real
reviewers will take phrases from the product description or from other
peoples' reviews either consciously or unconsciously.

This also matches up with a common bribed review technique of giving people
canned phrases to repeat in their reviews or hundreds of prewritten reviews to
be distributed out to people who are part of the review program.

Top reviewers are also not a good brake on this process because the best way
for them to profit from their reviews is to take bribes. Just going after
people who only leave positive reviews also doesn't really work because smart
reviewers salt their reviews with the occasional negative one (generally for
people who aren't bribing them).

User generated reviews emerged because many surveys across many different
product categories have shown that shoppers tend to trust peer reviews more
than they trust expert reviews. Part of this is because so many expert reviews
have been corrupted to an even greater degree, with PR departments basically
being bribery and party-throwing departments whose jobs are to manipulate
journalists and place articles in supposedly unbiased publications.

The issue from the seller side is that shoppers are absurd perfectionists. A
product can go from a 4.24 star to a 4.26 star average and have its conversion
rate double. The difference between 4 and 4.5 stars is the difference between
losses on the product and profits in many competitive categories. Also many
people just give 1 star reviews to products when they have minor nitpicks.
That'd be fine if that 1 star review didn't tank a product average and
suddenly mean the budget that was there for an employee suddenly isn't there
anymore.

In real terms the main difference in most categories between the reliably
4.5-5 star product and the 4 star product is that one seller spams harder than
the other one. Considering that nice guys finish last in that particular
competition, it rapidly becomes a triumph or the worst.

Long-run what will happen is that the reaction against user reviews will be as
severe as the reaction against critics has been. Part of this is also just a
scale issue: with so many products and brands constantly popping up globally,
there isn't enough time and editorial attention available to review
everything.

~~~
defgeneric
> smart reviewers salt their reviews with the occasional negative one
> (generally for people who aren't bribing them)

This is exactly the problem with the "consumer protection" racket--companies
like Consumer Affairs will curate a negative presentation of your company or
product, then call you up offering a $2,500/month subscription which basically
allows you to remove old negative reviews and prevent new ones from appearing
on their site.

~~~
snowpanda
Agreed, Yelp does the same thing.

------
nbrempel
I can say from personal experience that I used to seek out reviews on Amazon
even when buying goods from a brick and mortar store.

Now it’s almost the opposite. I’m hesitant to trust any reviews on the site
and buy goods from other vendors whenever possible.

It’s unfortunate; I hope they can implement some measures to prevent
fraudulent reviews.

------
ashman5
An even bigger problem they have is with the fake 2 Day shipping. Tried to
order a Prime 2 Day shipping item today (Sat 12/16) and delivery was 2 day
guaranteed for Thursday 12/21\. And recently, I'm getting zero weekend
delivery. Oddly, recent Ebay orders were delivered on Sunday.

------
frabbit
The fake-review problem was amusingly exposed for TripAdvisor by a journalist
who with, the aid of five people, had his garden shed rated as five stars:

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

At the end of the TRASHFUTURE podcast (14 Dec 2017 "The Shed Chronicles ft.
Oobah Butler, ca. 36 minutes in
[http://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/feed/](http://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/feed/)
) people are still calling for what he describes as "frozen dinners with the
sort of things that wankers like on them, like microherbs".

------
abiox
fake reviews are an issue, but so are low-quality reviews.

for example i've seen quite a few books with a modest handful of reviews have
their stars tanked by some terrible bad-faith reviews by people who take an
issue with the book that isn't directly about the quality or merit of the
content. (this really shows up in political and philosophy areas.)

this isn't the end of the world if i take the time to carefully survey
reviews, but i just don't have time to give every book due process. few people
really do.

i really wish i had some way to ignore individual reviews as well as
everything from a reviewer - 'ignore' meaning that the site discounts their
contribution to scoring when rendered for me.

------
pogue
I left this comment on the site's comment section (apologies if others have
already posted these suggestions - I didn't read through all the comments):

Try using fakespot.com or reviewmeta.com. They're both sites setup to try &
check the validity of Amazon comments using different methodology - such as
how many times a reviewer has left a review, certain trigger keywords known to
be used by bots & how many reviews Amazon has deleted from a review by request
of the merchant (yes, Amazon will do this!). This will leave you with a much
better sense of whether or not a product has been 'review-bombed' or if the
company is up to shady practices.

~~~
ecommerceguy
To be clear, Amazon will remove reviews at merchant request when the review is
about FBA shipping. Generally, these are bad reviews. A merchant would not
want to remove a good review when the subject is shipping.

"This came really fast!" 5 Stars is not a product review, however a merchant
would not want to remove it. "The box was completely damaged and destroyed the
product!!" 1 Star - will be removed by request if shipped via FBA. As with
anything for selling on Amazon, they are not exactly consistent with this
policy.

~~~
pogue
Sorry, FBA = ?

~~~
j79
Fulfillment By Amazon

------
zerebubuth
This is why I subscribe to an independent review and consumer advice service /
magazine. Money, even in small amounts, seems to distort reviews. Before I
trust a review I want to know where the money that paid for it came from.

------
aSockPuppeteer
Lately people will receive a message, email, or letter requesting a review
from the vendor in exchange for a free product or heavily discounted one. It
is hard to trust one thousand 5-star reviews.

~~~
doglet
similar to a lot of apartments incentivizing positive reviews from their
tenants

------
bdz
I really like Aliexpress even tho it's more like eBay and not Amazon (but on
the other hand Amazon is starting to feel like eBay nowdays)

1\. You can sort the product search page by order number (who many people
bought the same product). That alone is a big help to dodge fake products.

2\. People are encouraged to make reviews with photos. The seller usually
gives you a coupon if you make a review with photo which feels like a grey
area (am I being bribed?) but as a potential buyer it helpes me a lot to make
my decision.

------
wybiral
This may seem off topic but what do we do when bots catch up to our state of
the art for keeping them out?

Do we milk the concept of captchas until they turn into some kind of Turing
test? Can we even automate a Turing test in a way that machines can't bypass?

Do we basically ditch the concept of privacy and require some kind of
systematic provable identity in most places?

Or do we accept the fact that consensus can be faked by bots and try to
mitigate the noise by removing the spam as it appears?

------
soverance
Fake reviews on Amazon (or internet e-commerce sites at large) is a
significant problem.

I have had a previous employer use my personal information to manually create
and post fake reviews of his own products under my name. Nothing surprises me
anymore. I only found out because I received a notification email asking me to
confirm my review (which I had not written). Needless to say, I quit.

------
ineedasername
The open review system (anyone can review any item) maybe made some sense when
it was just book reviews, but makes much less sense for all items. A good
start would be to only allow reviews on verified purchases. At least then it
would be much harder for bad actors to up stakes on a listing and clone to a
new one once the authentic negative reviews piled up.

Verified reviews can be faked and gamed as well, but it is harder, more costly
and time consuming.

~~~
Marazan
It seems insanely obvious to me that only people who have purchased the item
through Amazon should get to review the product.

~~~
ineedasername
Yes. I'm trying to remember back to early amazon, circa the bubble burst... my
vague recollection is that reviews were more in the vein of a platform for
book reviews, not review of books as products... a fine difference, maybe one
wothout distinction when it comes to books, but an either way an open platform
for book reviews has very different trust and reliabilty requirements than
reviews attached to products being sold.

------
ratsmack
And there are also the poison pill reviews from competing vendors. They are
usually easy to spot because they are just a bunch of vitriol without any
substance.

------
mnm1
Amazon will never do something to fix this problem. Fake goods and garbage
products that break almost immediately after delivery are their bread and
butter. They need those fake reviews to sell a huge percentage of their
merchandise. They would much rather just close accounts of the people who
complain or whose shopping habits their algorithms don't like.

------
diebir
Could somebody explain the mechanism for creating "verified purchase" fake
reviews? Somebody actually bothers to go through trouble of doing a purchase
and creating a fake review? Anybody has any factual examples? Any pay for
services that can be used? Seems like an area just waiting to be investigated
by a media outlet...

~~~
naner
As long as the item isn't prohibitively expensive the company paying for the
review could just provide you the money to purchase the product.

~~~
diebir
Is this really practical for small time items? Does this happen at scale, or
there's some other mechanism to create fake reviews? Seems like the practice
is widespread, all real purchases?

------
jasonlotito
Amazon allows people known to sell reviews for money or product into their
special review program (I forget what it's called, but it highlights someone
as a good reviewer). I know this because a family member got caught and
effectively nothing happened.

------
LoSboccacc
fake review is relative. the primary problem for consumers now is fake
products from commingled inventory.

------
Havoc
I don’t really bother reading the reviews anymore. They’re invariably useless
promotional crap

------
mikequinlan
I mostly look at the 1 and 2 star reviews. It saves me a huge amount of money
-- I will see something interesting and think I want to buy it but then I read
the reviews and realize it is a bunch of crap.

~~~
Rotareti
The negative reviews could be fake as well.

------
phantom0308
Anecdotally, on WeChat 微信, top Chinese social media app, I know some friends
have received solicitations for good reviews in exchange for free goods.

------
davidgerard
Fakespot is not so great. It assumes anyone who doesn't have multiple reviews
is a bot, which is not a great heuristic in practice.

------
marban
... And not speaking of all the 1-star reviews that just relate to some
"horrible" delivery problems with the carrier.

~~~
bluedino
Even the good reviews can be bad. "5 stars..looks great can't wait to actually
use it"

------
GrumpyNl
Give people power and it will be corrupted.

------
megaman22
Friend of mine hada huge problem with this recently

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/amazon-
me...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-24/amazon-merchants-
still-find-new-ways-to-cheat-in-shopping-frenzy)

------
intrasight
This old phrase is still relevant today: "caveat emptor"

------
seanwilson
Do any companies offer you some kind of incentive to write reviews or rate all
the products you bought? I would have thought some variation of this would be
a good way to drown out fake reviews. Maybe this is too expensive to do well.

------
Chattered
It's not the same 23 word sentence. It's the same 23 word run-on. The first
comma should be either a semi-colon, colon or stop.

~~~
Chattered
Point being that plagiarism/copying might be easier to spot via mistakes. I
understand that this is how scholars do it for ancient texts.

~~~
doglet
In other words, repetition of the same mistakes implies higher probability of
copying

------
zherbert
The key is to never buy from an FBA seller. Only buy from Amazon.com as the
seller.

