Given the lack of barriers to entry to reviewing on the internet, The more positive reviews a service has the more likely they've had to actively incentivise people to review it, which tends towards an unwritten law of the internet that the quality of a product is almost inversely proportional to the quantity of unsubstantiated glowing testimonials they're able to point to. Don't believe me: Google "home business opportunities" and compare the Ponzi schemes to the franchises...
In Ferris' case, he could probably have achieved his astroturf effect simply by sending hundreds of advance copies to bloggers in the "lifestyle guru" market who'd be salivating over the content even if they weren't affiliate-linking their shill blog entries to it, which isn't that different to what any other publisher does save for the scale and the profile (though I certainly wouldn't rule out the alternate hypothesis of him paying someone in the Philippines to do it for him).
It's relatively easy to algorithmically penalise astroturfing in the overall rankings, remove duplicate IP entries altogether and normalise scores for reviewers that only give out top marks and order reviews by some form of reviewer quality score rather than (primarily) date. They've probably also got enough data to offer a "People that buy and rate things similarly to you thought" selection of reviews to their regular customers and wishlist users. The real problem is that however much Amazon feel inclined to penalise obvious astroturfing and , it's manifestly not in their interests to do so given that the book is a guaranteed bestseller. Even if people really hate the book it probably isn't going to put them off Amazon as a vendor.
Hunch might help because it's simply too big and vague to easily game; but it's non-specific by design about why you might be interested in a service. Peer recommendations via Facebook are a possibility - though I'm not sure I really want to give out or get unsolicited product recommendations from my friends. The best solution is probably that venerable dinosaur; traditional media and reviewers that actually have some sort of reputation to stake. I'd place rather more trust in reviews linked to by Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic than I would in Amazon or the IMDB.
In Ferris' case, he could probably have achieved his astroturf effect simply by sending hundreds of advance copies to bloggers in the "lifestyle guru" market who'd be salivating over the content even if they weren't affiliate-linking their shill blog entries to it, which isn't that different to what any other publisher does save for the scale and the profile (though I certainly wouldn't rule out the alternate hypothesis of him paying someone in the Philippines to do it for him).
It's relatively easy to algorithmically penalise astroturfing in the overall rankings, remove duplicate IP entries altogether and normalise scores for reviewers that only give out top marks and order reviews by some form of reviewer quality score rather than (primarily) date. They've probably also got enough data to offer a "People that buy and rate things similarly to you thought" selection of reviews to their regular customers and wishlist users. The real problem is that however much Amazon feel inclined to penalise obvious astroturfing and , it's manifestly not in their interests to do so given that the book is a guaranteed bestseller. Even if people really hate the book it probably isn't going to put them off Amazon as a vendor.
Hunch might help because it's simply too big and vague to easily game; but it's non-specific by design about why you might be interested in a service. Peer recommendations via Facebook are a possibility - though I'm not sure I really want to give out or get unsolicited product recommendations from my friends. The best solution is probably that venerable dinosaur; traditional media and reviewers that actually have some sort of reputation to stake. I'd place rather more trust in reviews linked to by Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic than I would in Amazon or the IMDB.