
Amazon has deleted over 900 reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new book - kercker
https://qz.com/1076357/hillary-clintons-what-happened-amazon-just-deleted-over-900-reviews-of-hillary-clintons-new-book/
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thejerz
Amazon did _not_ delete 900 reviews of Hillary's book. Amazon deleted 900
comments that weren't book reviews. Amazon reviews are for reviews, not
comments.

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candiodari
Ok, that makes real question whether they do this as a matter of normal course
or if this is a case of a politician "author" (ghostwritten of course)
receiving special treatment.

And the answer is, unsurprisingly, that this is definitely not standard Amazon
operating procedure.

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thejerz
> ghostwritten of course

Proof?

> this is definitely not standard Amazon operating procedure

Proof?

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andriesm
Worse than clickbait this belongs in the "fake news" garbage bin.

Not biased at all, the first paragraph starts :

"During the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump galvanized a small but
powerfully vicious fan base in his campaign against Hillary Clinton. Ten
months after Clinton was defeated, things are getting nasty again."

Labeling Donald Trump's fan base as "small" and "vicious" is rather absurd.
Apparently so small that he won the election. Absurd drivel. And misleading
headline as others here have pointed out.

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rb666
Another terrible clickbaity reddit title. Comments are not reviews. A review
requires reading the book!

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rapsey
They also deleted reviews by people who purchased it and scored it low.

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Steko
Where did it say that?

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Steko
Zoe Quinn's recent book also had a similar (and predictable) skew between
verified purchasers and non-verified. There's probably an amusing 'ethics in
Amazon reviewing' joke to be made there but I'll quit halfway.

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mirimir
Amazon ought to limit reviews to purchasers.

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DrScump
Amazon doesn't _know_ that a given reviewer hasn't obtained the book
elsewhere. Do you know of any other books for which they have performed
proactive censorship of reviews?

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code_duck
Right, that's why those people would, in this system, not be allowed to review
it on Amazon. Because Amazon doesn't know whether the reviewer has or hasn't
obtained the book at all.

~~~
mirimir
And indeed, Amazon isn't really Good Reads. It's an online store. There's no
reason why reviews there should cover anything except purchases. Except that
it makes Amazon look more of an active community. While that was important
years ago, does it really matter now?

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bdcravens
It happens in many places. Look up Art of the Deal and filter by 1-star
reviews, and you'll see many comments that are clearly just opinions of
President Trump, as opposed to the book itself.

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yenda
Clickbait title, we can already hear people screaming censorship without
reading the article.

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nariinano
Even though this is the correct thing to do, I don't like it that this book
got a special treatment. Will other books that have received bad reviews from
non-verified purchasers have those reviews removed?

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tcper
They won't, except they named Clinton

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plicense
This is very interesting - back when I joined Amazon, one of the new hire on
boarding questions was about how to deal with bad reviews and the principle
was to just leave them as it is and not delete it - I am not 100% sure about
it though - can someone confirm? If so deleting these reviews seems opposite
to that

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einrealist
The key is whether the reviews are legit. If the review is made by someone who
did not buy the product, its not a 'review'. It is then violating Amazon's
rules and should be deleted.

~~~
ztjio
By a large margin, the ratio of legitimate (verified buyer) to "maybe but
probably not legitimate" reviewers is the worst out there at the time of this
article's publishing. It's pretty clear these are not valid reviews.

Personally, I think on hot topic items like this, Amazon should simply lock
down 100% to verified purchases for like, 2 weeks.

~~~
ggg9990
The reason they don't do this is that the people with pre-publication access
to the book, while mostly the authors friends and family, are the only source
of reviews for buyers looking at Amazon on launch day. They don't want to
throw away those reviews, and those readers obviously didn't buy on Amazon.

~~~
ztjio
They don't need those reviews in these cases. There are PLENTY of real
reviewers in a high profile case like this.

