News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-... by faizshah on Sunday October 21, 2018 @09:28PM (#18271482)
I just looked for a headphone splitter for an iPhone. Every result on the page had pretty high reviews, but when you click on the results and look at the reviews you see weird five star reviews like "great planner with a great cover" and "this was the perfect organizer for my daughter's drawers" at the top of the reviews for a highly rated headphone splitter. I don't know what's going on with Amazon, but I ended up going to best buy to look for peripherals.
Re:Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-... by hippich on Sunday October 21, 2018 @09:34PM (#18271510)
It is sellers abusing product variation feature on amazon. Basically it works like that - they find out of stock product with high number of positive reviews, add it as a variation to their own product. Since this product is out of stock, it would not show up on the product page as an option to select, yet they gain all reviews/stars from that product. This needs to be reported to Amazon.
Re:Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-... by mancerayder on Sunday October 21, 2018 @10:14PM (#18271669)
That's very interesting and completely believable. If I may ask, how'd you find this? Do you work at Amazon (is this known at Amazon, I would assume so)?
Re:Fake review factories that run on Facebook and post five-... by hippich on Monday October 22, 2018 @01:28AM (#18272401)
I am a seller and have to scan daily for competitors pulling this trick. From communication with seller support, it appears that Amazon is on the way to stop reviews from one variation to propagate to all product in the "family" as a way to stop it, but when it happens - who knows. More pressure from both sellers and customers should push Amazon towards it.