Is Product Search Broken? Why Are We Still Stuck with Ads and Fake Reviews?

Re:Is Product Search Broken? Why Are We Still Stuck with Ads... by solardev on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @04:05PM (#43404358)

There are many companies that will pay people to write positive reviews on behalf of them or some third party (even though it's against the terms of service).

Even without that, Amazon itself (via the Vine program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Vine) will pay you in goods for writing reviews. I was a part of that program for a few years, and found my review quantity increasing and quality decreasing as I wrote more just to get more free crap from Amazon.

Many other marketplaces will also incentivize reviews in various ways. You personally might have more integrity, but the internet as a whole doesn't...

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Re:Is Product Search Broken? Why Are We Still Stuck with Ads... by rchaud on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @11:28PM (#43408033)

Those are clearly labeled. And Amazon Vine reviewers for the most part do make an honest effort to review the product. I tend to ig ore them in favour of those 3-4 line reviews in small caps and iffy grammar. That's a much better signal for reliability than a blog post length Vine review.

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Re:Is Product Search Broken? Why Are We Still Stuck with Ads... by throwaway519 on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @09:17AM (#43470846)

By labelling some reviews as paid reviews, readers are fooled to believe other reviews are not paid.

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