If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make them meaningless?

Re:If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make... by baddox on Friday March 06, 2020 @03:14PM (#22506879)

Can you think of some innovation that might replace review systems in the same way that refrigeration replaced ice transportation? This seems more like a cycle where review systems will be nice until they inevitably get gamed, at which point some new company will come out with expertly-curated reviews and recommendations, but then that company will sell out and compromise their curation, at which point the new crowd-sourced review website will take over. Ad infinitum.

I suppose you can come up with ideas like AI curation or spam prevention, or some decentralized reputation system. Those sound pretty wild, but hey, I reckon refrigeration would have sounded pretty wild too.

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Re:If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make... by zyang on Friday March 06, 2020 @03:22PM (#22506957)

There needs to be an independent outsider that can give uniform and unbiased reviews. i.e. Michelin reviews for airbnb. Question is how many people are willing to pay for these.

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Re:If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make... by amelius on Friday March 06, 2020 @04:49PM (#22507658)

You could imagine a network of trust, where some people have more trust than others. And there could be clusters where people with a lot of trust are not necessarily trusted by everyone. So this would be more general than a central authority like Michelin.

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Re:If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make... by SilasX on Friday March 06, 2020 @05:03PM (#22507759)

Isn’t that Consumer Reports? Although Airbnb listings are too extensive for them to independently review.

Edit: I suppose they could step in and evaluate it as a platform and validate whether issues get addressed.

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