This is not a new program. It has been around for vendors (not sellers) for a long time. It’s a good way to get reviews on a product which has none. Reviews are necessary for an item to perform well in Amazon’s search algorithm. Yes you pay to play because Amazon functions like every other retailer. Some related also non-news: you have to pay for end cap space in the supermarket and placement in the weekly circular.

Fun fact: Slotting fees for end-caps are largely waived at EDLP retailers (a business model much of the industry is moving towards, compared to the more traditional "Hi-Lo" pricing strategy) in favor of better pricing from suppliers. End cap placement is largely driven by the agenda of category managers, which depends on the metric du jour of the directors of grocery merchandising/VP. If promoting a product in the circular or putting it on an end-cap will increase units or gross for the category overall, that decision will be made whether or not there is some sort of supplier concession.

I recognise a lot of the words and letters used in this comment, but have no idea what it actually means?! Care to clarify...

- slotting fees, end-caps, EDLP, Hi-Lo, category manager, circular

Try Google. There is a slotting fees arricle in Wikipedia for instance.

You say it is not new as though you are contradicting the article. Newspapers publish opinions, analyses and reviews as well as coverage of current events.

The article mentions that ("If you invested $5,000 in Amazon in August of 2007, when Vine was announced...")

Quite tangential but for working toward freeing reviewing from Amazon or similar: https://lib.reviews/

Apparently is costs merchants $2500-$7500 per review https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&q=vine+voice+... The low hanging fruit is gone, now Amazon is going for the ones on top.

>Apparently is costs merchants $2500-$7500 per review

No, according to your own link, it's $2500-$7500 to get into the program, not for each review.

The price of an Amazon review seems to be around $3 on the black market

That seems... surprisingly lucrative. For the effort required, anyway. I'd be happy to supplement my income by $300/day, by quickly firing off 100 typical Amazon reviews on my lunch break:

* "Great product!"

* "I bought this for my husband and he seems to love it!"

* "I bought this for my grandson and I don't know what it is but he's happy!"

Six-figures a year would be more than feasible.

$3 is closer to the price for one off reviews. The overhead of getting the assignment, collecting payment and requirements would make it so you wouldn't have time to do that many.

For people who pump out 25-100 reviews at a time you are generally going to get less than a dollar. For example $10-$15 for 25 reviews is a pretty common if you can write American English without errors that might make it look like english is not your first language. Also, the reviews tend to need to be longer and specific to the product.

For English reviews the price is around 2$ or 3$, but for another language the price can go up, not by much but the price would be around 5$.

I used to do it to make beer money as a student a few years ago and I still hang in those "black market" forums and the price went lower few years a decent review in English was 5$.

Where does this market transact?

So are Vine reviews trustworthy ?

And do you use them when shopping at Amazon ?

one common problem I see with vine reviews is they often review things they don't have expertise in. For example sewing machines. I've got decent experience (maybe 50 hours) sewing. The vine reviews I saw were like "seemed to work pretty well" on both a $80 singer and a $3000 bernina. Same on a welder or soldering iron. Things that take hundreds of hours of practice to get passable at.

A lot if not most of Vine reviews are biased because they're free. It completely skews the reviews because I really don't want to parse the reviews to look for, "Gave it a 5 star because it's free, but otherwise would be a 2."

I skip them completely. If after I've made up my mind and I want to examine a detail usually the vine reviews has details of the product (not how good it is)... Or there would be a video posted by a vine reviewer.

I did some vine reviews. Didn’t impact how I rated them. Though some people do feel the obligation.

i am almost scared to use the word blockchain here right now but... well... why aren't consumer reviews and programs such as this (which AMZN should NOT be running, period) aren't something that would be ideal for a blockchain implementation.?

Why would that make any difference on this problem?

Because if you apply deep learning neural networks to blockchain AI technology you could get zero trust product reviews.

Reviews on Amazon are already linked to a user. Once you find the user's profile, you can see all of their reviews. Blockchain brings nothing to the table in regards to detecting bad reviews. Amazon at least affirmatively indicates whether or not a user has purchased a certain product.

Furthermore, there are already (non-blockchain) tools to adjust a product's reviews to account for bad actors: https://www.fakespot.com/

I'm pretty sure he was joking...