Reviews - particularly on Amazon - are meaningless. The cat-and-mouse game has gone so far that as a consumer I see a 4.9 rating as indistinguishable from a 0.9 rating. Buying from an unknown brand is a crapshoot. Buying from a known brand on Amazon isn't much better.

And it makes me wonder how long these black hat practices are going to be useful to sellers. Most Amazon users have to be feeling the same way at this point.

I've been an Amazon customer for more than 20 years. Yes, both the 5-star reviews and 1-star reviews can be gamed. Many 5-stars reviews are fake because of bribery. Many 1-star reviews are from competitors trying to hurt their rivals.

That said, I still find Amazon reviews useful if I read the texts instead of depending on the number of stars. I go to the 3-star and 2-star reviews and read the specific complaints customers are writing about. Some reviewers also post useful photos.

For example, I needed to buy a guest bed for COVID quarantine so I looked for "air mattress" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=air+mattress

Most of those have 5-star reviews. I ignore that and simply read the texts. After digesting some reviews, I learn that all air mattresses regardless of brand suffer from leakage (usually after the 30-day return period). Some recommended getting a foldable foam mattress as an alternative to totally avoid the issues with leaks and broken air pumps. That's what I ended up buying and it was the Amazon reviews that steered me away from air mattresses.

Also 5 star reviews can be honest and useful; examine the text for credibility then look at other reviews by the same person. If they're all 5 star then you most likely have a stinker, but some measured criticism and other, lower starred reviews may show validity.

Amazon’s reviews are like old Yahoo’s news comment streams (same as YouTube today). I’d like to think average/sane human beings do not spend their time compulsively hanging out at such joints.

The best sensible thing Amazon could do is list the number of repeat customers against the number of sell. That would be honest and fair.

Sites like Amazon need the review layer to substitute the physical contact of brick and mortar that they removed. Pretty common story by now - instead of paying employees in stores, they crowd source the value for free, and we're happy to go along since we get lower prices in the bargain.

That's a win-win eliminating a bullshit job.

I can get useful insights from reviews so I also like to contribute back if I find something worth mentioning.

Reading reviews without contributing them is a form of freeloading.

I write a few reviews because if something is particularly good or useful, or very bad, I want others to benefit from that.

Now say you got something good. Again, you have to first eliminate your subjectivity. Why should the world care if you like something? But you want to help others make a good decision. Fine. Let them ask questions genuinely and then you can answer. Platform should let that happen because otherwise vendor would never let others answer on their behalf. QA should be the only place for interaction. Question should only be posed by potential customers. Answers, only by known customers.

Crowd sourced reviews are first and foremost subjective. They spawn either a fan boy syndrome or ‘I’m going to get’ you syndrome. If not either of them then they have spawned a whole new underground market of their own. Indeed, they have not proven to naturally balance the real and legitimate market; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been gamed. But Amazon does have QA alongside reviews. This makes it obvious that reviews are their cash cows using/abusing human psychology - of greed and gratification.

So how do you tell? IMHO, it’s not the word phrase, but the word count. If you’re saying too many ‘just nice’ things —repetitive — you prolly want something.

Also, Amazon is frigging annoying about how much they ask you to comment. When And if I do it’s usually terse.

Yeah. People who should kill themselves – according to the late, great Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUd6ARKcPS0

Upvoted in any case.

Sometimes.... :)

You don't look for that <i> Verified purchase </i> text ?

If you're not being sarcastic...

Those "Verified Purchase" reviews can also be faked by manufacturers/sellers reimbursing the credit-card payment of the Amazon shopper.

Example: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon...

Well, I got contacted by the seller, offering me $20 to take down the review. I ignored it.

Then a few weeks later, they upped the offer. And in response, I downed the stars.

Last I heard from them, they were offering me $70 to take down the review. For something that cost under $15.

Amazon itself doesn't help either. I bought something (a food item) from Amazon, and it was nowhere close to the quality in the photographs or description. I wrote a review, describing how the actual item was of much lower quality than expected. Amazon refused to post my review! And I've been an Amazon customer for nearly 20 years!

And this really is a decent biz model. I mean, free items, just sell them for 50% and you can make a living.

Scale this up using multiple amazon accounts, multiple addresses.

The market is big enough so that you can make a living out of this, I'm sure.

And your x2 multiplier makes it even easier!

But other than that, reviews are at best useless or at worst criminally misleading.

And since not buying is the safer choice anyways, the existence of fake negatives isn't that much of a problem.

I understand why someone would think that, and I do it myself too, but do we have evidence that it's true?

https://www.fakespot.com/

An example product with adjusted ratings:

https://www.fakespot.com/product/quickie-bulldozer-24-inch-m...

> Our engine has profiled the reviewer patterns and has determined that there is high deception involved.

I wish that were true, but I'm afraid the vast bulk of consumers are still astonishingly unaware. People who discuss Amazon on HN are a tiny drop in a very large ocean.

No cheaper than elsewhere, Amazon is chaos now.

For some reason, all the products with fake reviews hang around the 4.4-4.7 rating mark. They're seldom 4-stars or lower

I went back to the old brick and mortar for my protein powder (though I’d also be willing to buy online from non-marketplace sources that take ownership of the supply chain).

Again, I love Amazon. But if they refuse to take responsibility for whatever arrives at my house no way is it going into my mouth...

You can pay for good reviews, but legitimate complaints might be removed.

The official Vine club hands out 5s on a suspicious scale as well - and even though the reviewers are marked by the little Vine badge, it looks more like a verification check mark than an ad disclosure, likely boosting the signal instead of dampening it.

It seems a bit like complaining that a surgeon that does autopsies doesn't raise the dead.

I wish we could figure out some incentive for people -- both individually and corporately -- to behave less selfishly, but it seems to be a hard problem.

EDIT Here is the article

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/her-amazon...

And the corresponding HN discussion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21593480

[1] https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Type-C-USB-Male-Cable/dp...

TBH, I think reviews, more than code, wants to be free. Amazon do a fine service providing a platform for product reviews, but I worry all this data now belongs to a private biased entity. Open reviews, anyone?