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Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by Ecolog on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @07:04PM (#19259651)
Reddit is so useful in that regard. So many niches with honest and detailed reviews that I usually don't buy something online without checking a relevant subreddit first.
Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by Razengan on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @05:30AM (#19262298)
That statement itself seems like astroturfing.

How can one be sure those subreddits don't have any paid posters?

When you have a popular post that reaches the Reddit front page, you may receive messages from people asking if you'd like to promote their products.

Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by Unklejoe on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:36AM (#19263111)
> How can one be sure those subreddits don't have any paid posters?

My guess is that they eventually will (and I'm sure some already do). However, one thing that kind of helps weed out the fake reviews is the fact that you can inspect a user's post history.

Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by Paul-ish on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @10:45AM (#19263906)
You can see a reviewers review history on Amazon.
Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by function_seven on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @01:10PM (#19265451)
Yeah, but that's just reviews.

On reddit or other more general sites, you can see their entire comment history. Hopefully you'll notice that a tiny tiny portion of their comments are related to products or reviews.

In other words, you can get a feel for if the person is genuine or not.

Of course, that doesn't 100% rule out paid shilling by (otherwise) honest people, but you do get a much better sense of the veracity of reviews on a site like reddit than you could ever get from Amazon.

Re:FTC Brings First Case Challenging Fake Paid Reviews on an... by JustSomeNobody on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @07:42AM (#19262853)
You can't be sure of anything. All you can do is use multiple sources and aggregate the data.