
Amazon’s Fake Review Economy - jonbaer
https://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolenguyen/amazon-fake-review-problem
======
telchar
I suspect a big part of this problem is private brands. When 100 people can
order the same cheap flashlight from a no-name factory in China and list it on
Amazon as their own product there is a lot of incentive to fake reviews to get
an advantage over the other sellers. And the huge number of product listings
just makes it that much harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I would like to see Amazon raise the barrier to entry to prevent fly-by-night
sellers from listing the same crappy products. I give up sometimes when
looking for something after seeing dozens or hundreds of pages of the same
thing listed under different brands from different sellers.

Is there really so much benefit to having everyone and their uncle selling on
Amazon? I can go to Ebay for that. As Amazon becomes no more trustworthy than
Ebay I lost my incentive to shop there.

~~~
leggomylibro
On the other hand, what you describe is exactly what I love about Amazon.

Say I have an idea for a robot, and I need a few dozen battery clips, some
NiMH batteries, a dozen servo motors, a bunch of disc magnets, a box of M3
screws/nuts, some PLA filament, a microcontroller board, and a small display
panel to show status/errors/etc.

I can buy all of that and have it delivered in a day or two, for less than $5
more per item than I would pay if I ordered it from a Taobao listing and
waited on international shipping. And I tend to have less problems with the
Amazon listings, presumably because the sellers know I can return them quickly
and painlessly if there are quality issues.

There is a _huge_ benefit to being "the everything store".

~~~
mox1
Yep and unless you spend hours researching the sellers, 100% of those NiMH
batteries and servo motors will be absolute crap. The batteries will have fake
UL logos, fake Samsung or whomever logos, etc. etc.

At this point, I would rather order my socks from Target and my electronics
from Mouser. At least i know they have long standing relationships with
distributors and I wont be getting fake products.

~~~
tracker1
Thanks for mentioning Mouser... not familiar with it, but it feels like Newegg
(my prior goto) is chasing Amazon down the quality black hole.

~~~
as-j
You may also want to checkout Digikey. It’s more focused on discreet
components, but they have a huge catalog of electronics that’s worth searching
through, and pretty reasonable shipping.

~~~
tracker1
Yeah, I've used Digikey for a few odds and ends too. I wish Amazon would just
deal with their seller issues. Per-seller labels to at least track which
seller's goods are counterfeit and/or problematic would be a good start. A big
fat warning when refunds/returns aren't handled by Amazon would be another.

------
JoblessWonder
I have seen a huge increase in product listings being changed from one item to
something completely different.

For example, a listing had reviews from prior to 1/18 that mentioned how the
product was a __metallic ruler __however the product page had been completely
changed and it was now selling __USB wall chargers __, using the positive
reviews previously posted for credibility. I haven 't seen this scam mentioned
much. I'd imagine it is people selling their old, unused Amazon product pages
to someone else.

~~~
okmokmz
Ya, ever since products began being listed together in a single listing I've
lost a lot of trust in the reviews. For example, when looking at dog beds I
found listings where the reviews talked about different shapes, sizes,
materials, colors, and manufacturers. Back when I first started using prime it
was great because I could find good products quickly, while trusting the
reviews and prices. In recent years I've drastically cut my purchasing from
Amazon, because it takes much more time and effort to find high quality,
authentic items with reasonable prices. I've been considering cancelling prime

~~~
dwringer
When you are viewing the reviews, there is an option to filter displayed
reviews to only the currently displayed "style" or subitem. Go down to the
reviews and select "See all reviews" and a list of filter selectors will
become visible at the top of the displayed results. Where it says "All
formats" you can drop down and change this to "Show only reviews for
<variation-type>: <variant> [| ...]" where the variant info is based on
whatever product you were actually looking for.

~~~
waisbrot
Too bad this isn't the default. Or better yet, something like "All versions of
this product (...) / Just this variant (...)". Similar to the way Apple
segments mobile app reviews by release version.

------
JohnJamesRambo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law)

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

I don't know a way around this with Amazon but it is getting increasingly
annoying using a site where everything is 4-5 stars with hundreds or thousands
of reviews and you need incredible intuition to tell the fake reviews from the
real ones.

~~~
Judgmentality
[https://www.fakespot.com/](https://www.fakespot.com/)

It's not perfect, but it's something.

~~~
BadCookie
You'd think that Amazon would have some technology similar to FakeSpot's by
now, but I'm not convinced that they do. I bought a product that had the
special "Amazon's Choice" label on it that turned out to be a dud. I looked up
the product on FakeSpot just now, and FakeSpot (correctly, I believe)
identifies the reviews on that product to be unreliable (grade level "C").
Just a single anecdote, but it's clear to me that there's a ton of room for
improvement on Amazon's part.

Another strange thing about the "Amazon's Choice" label is this: I've seen a
product get that label in part due to a low number of returns ... but the
seller doesn't accept returns! That should be a con, not a pro.

As you can probably tell, I have not been happy with the results of following
Amazon's product choice advice.

~~~
vanadium
Plenty of the "Amazon's Choice" flags are...a little deceptive. Maybe not
deceptive in a conventional sense, but say you see a product in the search
results on Amazon and one has that flag. You click on it, because hey.

Then you notice the keywords attached to "Amazon's Choice". Oftentimes,
they're strange and esoteric. Oftentimes, that flag is put on what appears to
be a random off-brand item sitting right next to a much, much better product
more deserving of that "Choice" insignia.

~~~
vertexFarm
From what I've seen I'm guessing the amazon's choice tag is arbitrary and
generated by some algorithm that simply matches up common search terms to the
most-bought item. When it's something simple and common like "wireless mouse"
it's probably alright. When it's a bit more esoteric like "male displayport
socket soldered connector" or some other hopeless attempt to optimize search
results and filter out noise, you get strange things.

------
sytelus
Forget fake reviews... I'm encountering alarming level of _fake products_ on
Amazon. If you are buying batteries, water filters, razor blades, power cords,
sun glasses etc then you are likely buying fake products pushed from China
with same branding as the real thing. These items are usually even marked as
"Prime" and "shipped by Amazon" and many qualifying for same day free shipping
for prime members. So naive customers would go on to trust this and have no
clue they are getting fake products made in China but warehoused and shipped
by Amazon's awesome logistic system. For lot of high margin recurring items,
fake producers are minting mountain of money these days.

~~~
dawnerd
And if its batteries you want, find a trusted brand and buy directly. I trust
anker, I buy their batteries from their site. Funny enough they end up having
the item fulfilled by amazon. Ends up being cheaper since I don't have prime
and anker still gave me free two day shipping.

------
xemoka
Just as bad is the Q&A section, for the life of me, I can't figure out why
anyone would respond to a Q&A question if they do not know the answer, have
not used the product, or just generally have no useful input to add. It's
maddening to see the question you'd like to ask, only to find out some buffoon
has provided non-answers-often to the point of burring correct (or at least,
marginally valid) responses. This should be easier to correct...

~~~
martincmartin
I think Amazon sends emails saying "someone has asked a question about this
product," which can make it seem like someone asked YOU, even though they send
the email to a lot of people.

~~~
bluetidepro
This is correct. It's more of a UX problem by Amazon to non-tech users. Amazon
phrases it like "martincmartin asked you, bluetidepro, blah blah blah." and a
lot of times the non-tech user will literally reply back with "I'm not sure"
or "I don't know" and then Amazon still records that response as an answer to
the question. I wish their system was smart enough to recognize these replies
like this that I often see and just ignore them.

~~~
zrobotics
It's not restricted to emails, I've seen mobile push notifications from the
app (which were enabled b/c of shipping notifications) asking me to respond.
Tapping the notification brought me directly to the question. I'm sure this is
the main reason for the garbage answers, since it's as much work to answer as
responding to a text.

~~~
vertexFarm
Wow, gross. I hate push abuse. This is another reason why I have a strict
policy that if an app works in a web browser, it should stay in a web browser.
It only wants out of that web browser so it can get its greasy little fingers
all over your stuff.

I especially hate services that intentionally break their mobile site and
disallow forcing the desktop site to make you to install their greasy, slimy
mobile app. Like Facebook and Reddit. So scummy.

------
DanielBMarkham
_"...An Amazon spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the percentage of inauthentic
reviews on the platform is “tiny,”..."_

This is clearly total and utter crap, as anybody who has spent any time on
Amazon knows.

What was not mentioned in the article, but is critically important, is that
many times you can get more mileage out paying for negative reviews of
competitors than you can your own positive reviews. Many times I've been
looking at product X only to read in the reviews something like "X was
okay...and enjoyed it. But it wasn't near as good as Y"

And over to Y I'm headed. It's an in-site referral.

I've read many negative reviews where it's obvious that the competitors are
paying. "Great look, but why can't they have A?" (A is not important, but
another vendor offers it and wants to use it as a market differentiator)

I don't see any easy answers to Amazon's problems. As they continue to
monopolize all commerce, it'll just get worse.

~~~
Someone1234
> This is clearly total and utter crap, as anybody who has spent any time on
> Amazon knows.

"Today's Deals" is absolutely infested with brand new products with tons of
suspicious reviews, and has been for the last year. Even just checking the
date from the first to the last review (e.g. one week) reveals problems for a
product with 100+ reviews.

> I don't see any easy answers to Amazon's problems.

There's no "easy" answers, but user reputation is a good start. Right now
every review is worth the same as every other review, but looking at the data
available we can rate reviews:

\- Did the verified buyer actually receive the item before review?

\- Is the reviewer's account brand new?

\- What does account activity look like outside of reviewing (e.g. Do they
browse products? Shop? Check order history? How many non-buy/non-review
interactions do we have for every review posted?)

\- How did they get back to the product to review it (e.g. direct link? third
party site? order history?)

\- Did they use a coupon for a discount on the product? Is that coupon posted
on Amazon? What % was the coupon? If it is 90% are they even a verified buyer?

\- Was the shipment tracked? If not how do we know they even received
anything?

~~~
craftyguy
I've heard of folks gaming at least some of these points by offering refunds
(through a different channel, e.g. paypal) to buyers to leave a positive
review. I don't know if it's true, but it definitely seems plausible and an
easy way to buy reviews from 'legit' buyers.

Amazon could counter this by offering a big bounty on turning in sellers that
do this, and/or financially penalizing them (the sellers) if sufficient
evidence is produced.

------
dfraser992
[https://douglas-fraser.com/FakeReviews/index.html](https://douglas-
fraser.com/FakeReviews/index.html)

If anyone is interested... it is my dissertation on developing ML ensembles to
classify reviews as fake or not, strictly using features derived from textual
analysis (deception theory, stylometry, etc). Behavioral type features, like
IP address and relationships between spamming accounts are more useful, but
the text still has some value. At some point, I will expand this to using
actual Amazon reviews, but I had to drop that idea just to get the
dissertation done on time.

Several years ago, the percentage of fake reviews was estimated at 2 to 6%, so
I'm sure it has increased to (gut feeling) probably like 10% these days. Is
that "tiny"? A really good stat to calculate would be the percentage of
products that have more than just a few fake reviews - such that the consumer
is given a bad impression. That stat probably is not "tiny" and thus creates
the perception Amazon reviews are useless.

~~~
DenisM
Are you using NLP of any sort to assist with feature extraction? Curious.

~~~
dfraser992
Yes - I primarily used spaCy [0] to handle all the NLP related tasks
(tokenization, etc) as well as empath [1]. The Stanford Parser was only used
for constituency parsing as spaCy doesn't handle that. The different feature
sets were then derived from all that data.

[0]: [https://spacy.io](https://spacy.io) [1]:
[https://github.com/Ejhfast/empath-client](https://github.com/Ejhfast/empath-
client)

------
braythwayt
Upton Sinclair on why Amazon has trouble getting rid of fake reviews and
scammy sellers:

    
    
      > “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
      > when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

~~~
trendia
I'm not even sure that Amazon really benefits from this.

I have become super wary to buy things from Amazon even with good reviews,
because I am suspicious the reviews are fake.

~~~
bonestamp2
I agree. I am using amazon less now than before because I can't trust amazon
the way I used to. Part of that is fake reviews. It may not hurt amazon now,
as they're still acquiring a lot of new prime users (baby boomers) but they
too will sour and then it will be too late for amazon to earn trust back.

It's an easy problem to solve too... only allow reviews from people who have
purchased the product on amazon. Nearly every other major e-commerce site does
that. The fact that amazon hasn't required this is a good sign that they don't
think that is the most beneficial thing to them. Their system already has this
feature, but most sellers don't enable it.

~~~
tracker1
Many reviewers are ordering through amazon, and are paid outside of amazon...
Amazon needs to invest in heuristics for reviewers.

If someone literally reviews over 90% of what they order on Amazon, they're
probably paid for it. If someone only buys things via external links, they're
probably paid for it.

There's lots that Amazon can do. Hell, putting seller stickers on co-inventory
to track the counterfeiters would be a nice start.

~~~
bonestamp2
> putting seller stickers on co-inventory to track the counterfeiters would be
> a nice start

Great idea! They'd still have the benefits of mixing inventory but then you
can track who is putting fakes in the bin.

------
tasty_freeze
I bought a book on "music theory". It was a relatively recent release and had
about ten 5 star reviews. It was relatively cheap, so I bought it.

There was no music theory ... just an exhaustive list of scales. The "more
than 100 exercises on CD" was simply 30 seconds of the author playing each
scale.

So I went back and read the reviews. They were "Just perfect!" and "Exactly
what I was looking for!".

Comically, a couple reviews of a different music theory book were obviously
writing their review in a foreign language then translating it to English
because instead of using the phrase "music theory" they used "music
hypothesis".

------
briandoll
The Planet Money podcast had an episode on this recently that was really
fascinating:
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/27/606528176/episode-838-a-series-
of-mysterious-packages)

It wasn't about Amazon specifically, but the sophistication of these scams are
really intriguing.

------
ageitgey
Does anyone else think it's weird that this article is talking about scammy
practices on Amazon by linking to scammy examples with the reporter's unique
Amazon affiliate id?

~~~
astura
In fairness, it BuzzFeed might automatically replace Amazon URLs with either
their affiliate version of the link when an article is published or the
reporter's affiliate version of the link. I think slickdeals does this when
someone links to Amazon.

------
QueensGambit
Wait! It gets worse! There are sellers who get paid reviewers to write bad
reviews on competitor's products.

Even the honest ones are forced to get fake reviews, because their competitor
is winning with fake reviews. This is the cost of replacing humans with
algorithms, before it is on par in accuracy.

~~~
gowld
How does a human detect a fake bad review?

The problem here is not replacing humans with algorithms, it's with replacing
trusted humans with arbitrary humans (and not even checking whether one human
is pretending to be many humans). This is the same problem with online forums
and comment sections. We need a way to build a web of trust, so I can tap my
network for reviews, but have a way to blacklist the shills who pop up.

~~~
tracker1
Maybe require that you purchased the product on Amazon before they count a < 3
star review?

There's no reason the "average" from the reviews presented need to count them
all... the search ratings could easily exclude reviews by those that didn't
have a confirmed purchase.

~~~
qihqi
As stated in the article: The reviewer did purchase the product in Amazon and
he's getting refund through PayPal.

------
jxramos
I had a great laugh along with another reviewer for this bike that seemingly
hired a bunch of exaggerated writers to post unverified purchase reviews for
it. [https://www.amazon.com/VTSP-Upgrade-Bicycle-Mechanical-
Wareh...](https://www.amazon.com/VTSP-Upgrade-Bicycle-Mechanical-
Warehouse/product-reviews/B07B7GTCJ2)

Something about the language trying too hard that the reviews just came off
fake. It's a real bummer having to add this to the mental wading through
online junk.

On another front I definitely like the idea of Amazon's Choice, that's based
on quantitative things like return rate and what not. I'd like to see more of
that data trend in that direction.

~~~
jdietrich
Most of those reviews are satirical, as are the Q&As. The product is a
grotesque parody of a bicycle, so some scallywags have reviewed it
appropriately.

It has clearly been designed by someone who has seen a few photos of fast road
bikes, but doesn't know or care about any aspect of what makes a bike fast.
It's the bicycle equivalent of a cheap Honda that some teenager has absolutely
ruined with tacky "upgrades". It might not be obviously apparent to a novice,
but the product images genuinely made me laugh out loud.

The reviews are an embarrassment to Amazon, but so is the fact that this
product is even for sale. It's an atrocious bicycle that should have never
been built in the first place, designed with the sole intention of deceiving
naive customers. A quick browse of the bicycles category on Amazon suggests
that this is an endemic problem - the customer reviews suggest that many are
dangerously defective.

~~~
alonmower
Woah, you're not exaggerating. It weighs 41 lbs!!!

------
jdeibele
Amazon, Walmart, Target do a lot with their store brands. It becomes more and
more tempting to buy just from those because I (presumably) don't have to
worry about counterfeits (where Amazon co-mingles everything that's supposed
to be an "Apple") or review rigging like this.

What ends up happening a lot for me is fraud fatigue: I go to buy something
and after 20 minutes of studying I don't buy.

~~~
tracker1
Quality doesn't even stand there either... I bought some amazon branded
speakers (cheapy ones) that I used at work, didn't really need much... liked
them... bought a couple more, all dead within a few months of use.

There's no quality control on anything anymore it feels like sometimes.

------
chrissnell
The absolute worst department on Amazon for this, IMHO, is kids electronic
toys. I've been scammed multiple times on this, to the point that I won't buy
R/C product there anymore.

Once you give a gift to a kid, you can't send it back without a fuss and I
think that the sellers know this. The return rate for kids stuff must be a
fraction of that for other consumer electronics.

~~~
gh02t
Pretty much any simple (i.e. easily cloned) item under $10 suffers. Sellers
know it's not worth the hassle of packing and returning something. Only about
5% of customers post reviews and since the items are cheap sellers can afford
to give enough away to review farmers that they can overwhelm reviews from
legit customers.

------
paul7986
So is everything on the Internet fake or about 60 percent fake?

Can we even take the Internet seriously re: anything that deals with commerce,
politics and etc?

~~~
vuln
"Don't believe everything you see on TV." Somehow got lost on the internet.

------
vinayms
I always had this inkling, so since early on, despite the hype and
'attractive' prices, I have bought nothing but books. In fact, I can't see
myself buying anything but books online, from any vendor and not just Amazon.

Even with books, especially technical books, I have fallen to the trap of
unwittingly buying Indian version of the book (I am an Indian living in India)
where chapters are culled, contents are 'adapted', preface and other such
items are missing etc. But this could be my fault as I failed to read the fine
print, which does exist.

(It enrages me that Indians are forced to use substandard versions of
internationally acclaimed books for their reference. I am fine with using gray
scale instead of 32M color images, or using thinner paper, smaller fonts etc
but altering content, skipping content etc is bad. I am sure there is an
economic constraint behind this - Indian versions are usually 1/5th to 1/8th
the international price - and often think why don't they use substandard
presentation instead of substandard content, but what do I know.

Many times, I buy older version of a book which will be far cheaper, and in
'Indian price range', than the freshly minted, latest and up to date version,
especially when it deals with 'static' topics like maths, physics, linguistics
etc because I have come to realize that the book companies whip out newer
versions with negligible changes just to keep their business running,
especially when its supposed to be a text book.)

------
at-fates-hands
I was duped after buying a set of wireless headphones. I did a bunch of
shopping online and landed at Amazon. The headphones they had listed had
nearly 4,000 4+ star rating, I figured they were all legit so I purchased
them. In the box when they arrived was a small postcard which read, "Give us a
positive 4 or 5 star rating on Amazon, and you can order any of our products
for 50% off!"

This was less than six months ago and clearly after Amazon had outlawed the
practice in 2016.

------
pgrote
Can someone explain this to me:

"Shutting down disingenuous reviews is tricky for Amazon. By doing so, the
company risks alienating sellers, a core part of its business."

In the next paragraph:

"Amazon is the place to be for e-commerce sellers and is increasingly seen as
a utility. In 2017, Amazon accounted for nearly half of all e-commerce sales
in the US (44%) with $196.8 billion in sales."

If Amazon is the place to be, alienating the bad actor sellers isn't going to
be an issue.

------
snurk
I'm an Amazon Vine reviewer ... Ask me anything.

I've been one for years. It's an odd insider culture, which is pretty hard to
talk about with anyone else. There's a lot of competition among the "Viners"
as we call ourselves. And there's also a lot of decision-making. E.g., is the
tax-value income and time required actually worth it to me? Many, many times,
it's not.

~~~
dawnerd
I used to skip past every single vine review + flag some as being bad. It's
painfully obvious they're giving good reviews for the free product.

~~~
snurk
I really doubt that's actually happening. For a long time there was a Vine
forum, and the culture was definitely about reviewing as honestly as possible.
I'd posted many positive but also many negative reviews before being selected
for Vine.

It also seems like there are many more products needing reviews than
reviewers. I've never worried about being negative.

And finally, the item is definitely not free:

* Amazon displays the tax value of each item we're offered for review, and reports it to the IRS if we choose it. So literally, the product is taxable income.

* Some items, like books, take a lot more time and effort, compared to their monetary value. But all items require time.

* Some items have collateral costs. Just a couple of examples: I once reviewed an AC/DC converter for the car which blew a fuse when I tried it out. That cost me a trip to the repair shop. Another time I reviewed a floor lamp which arrived destroyed in the box and left my living room speckled in glass shards and styrofoam pieces.

tldr; To me, it's a contractual relationship that I'll continue doing as long
as it makes sense to me.

------
dogweather
I consider the price of a Fakespot subscription part of the cost of doing
business on Amazon. It's sad, but it works. Crazy that Amazon doesn't simply
purchase it or similar service. The browser extension marks up listings
nicely:

[https://imgur.com/a/dQKdM0j](https://imgur.com/a/dQKdM0j)

------
hamandcheese
I think I agree that incentivized reviews aren’t necessarily bad (assuming the
incentive isn’t tied to a certain star level).

Amazon has a real opportunity to legitimize and enable sellers to offer
incentivized reviews on their platform. I’m not sure how Amazon Vine ever
worked, but I envision an interface almost similar to AdWords, where sellers
can try and narrow down their target audience and offer a select sample an
incentive to review, inline with search listings.

Since amazon would know about serial reviewers as well as how critical they
are based on prior reviews, they could finely tune who is offered the
incentive. I can easily imagine a world where these Amazon ordained
incentivized reviews become far more trustworthy than ordinary ones. After
all, if a product is good why wouldn’t the seller get a few incentivized
reviews through Amazon?

------
xenihn
If you want to see a bunch of fake reviews, search for Instant Pot cookbooks
and read the reviews for those.

------
vannevar
Amazon may not be able to _stop_ it, but they could surely mitigate it
significantly. They choose not to, because in the end, having lots of reviews
for lots of products is better for them than having a few reviews for a few
products, even if a significant number of the reviews are fake.

------
wdn
Amazon can fix this, but they have no incentive to. It doesn't matter who make
the sales, they get 15%. If the seller uses FBA, Amazon get a cut there too.

An example of a fix could be take into account of reviews to sales ratio and
flag those products with high reviews to sales ratio.

~~~
vertexFarm
How do you propose they determine which reviews are fake and which are real?

------
codazoda
What if Amazon got rid of reviews?

------
krylon
I have tried to deal with this by mainly reading the bad reviews and looking
at what people were complaining about specifically.

But I read that vendors will also fake _bad_ reviews of competitors, so that
might not be a good solution, either.

------
rapfaria
Happens to 95% of Packt books.

------
iaeneas
Awesome piece of content.

