The real problem is that the review aggregator sites don't have all the data that could possibly be available to them. For example, I wrote a 2 star review of an LED light bulb I bought on Amazon. Claimed to be 90+ CRI, was actually a garish green color with a little bit of red and blue thrown in. I measured it with a spectrophotometer and included the spectrum chart in my review. The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines" or something. So any review aggregator is missing that genuine review, as is anyone browsing Amazon.com. For this reason, I don't trust _any_ reviews anymore. Amazon filters out the negative ones!

> The review was not posted for "violating their guidelines"

Aww man this bums me out. I love the critical (detailed) reviews, they're the first thing I look for on amazon.

I agree that negative reviews attract a lot more scrutiny. I've also had negative reviews scrubbed.

> "violating their guidelines"

Any guesses as to what guidelines were violated?

My guess is that the spectrum chart triggered some spam protection, honestly. I would call customer service but Amazon's customer service can't do anything other than send you another copy of the item you're complaining about.

(That's my other Amazon story. One time, I bought some bicycle tires on Amazon. They sent me the wrong model, mountain bike size instead of road bike size. I wrote them a detailed email describing what they sent me and what they should have sent. "We're so sorry!". The next day, two identically wrong tires arrived. I complained and they refunded my money. I now had to find a way to use four mountain bike tires, and I still had no road bike tires. 2 riding days lost. An hour writing emails lost. And I still had no bike tires. I bet 99% of people would call that "great customer service". I think it's terrible. (Amazon did eventually remove the listing in question, so that's nice.))

The challenge here is that there's no answer key, so nobody can really know for sure which reviews are authentic and which are not.

We all can look at reviews and make our best guess, but at the end of the day, it's always going to still be a guess. At ReviewMeta, we aren't claiming to know all the answers. We try our best to ensure everyone knows it's an estimate (you're actually forced to click an I agree button before accessing the site) and we also provide all our work so you can use the numbers to help you make a more informed decision.

I agree with you overall, but I'm curious - did you also go to the other items and read the reviews there, or run those items through fakespot?

If you're going to create a fake account to promote your items, you could give your items 5* and then copy other reviews on other products exactly (including # of *s) to make the account look more legitimate.