Re:The Amazons of the dark net
by gwern on Sunday November 02, 2014 @07:48PM
(#8548822)
> It is rather naive for this writer to assume that things like online reviews will work or continue to work for these illegal sites. Why do they believe that illegal drug sites will have honest reviews
It is rather naive to call that 'rather naive' given that the black-markets have functioned well since January 2011 (so, coming up on 4 years soon). I don't think it would take scammers 4 years to realize that reviews can be faked.
> when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews.
Yelp doesn't control purchases of services and take commissions and only let buyers review, so it's in a different position from the operators of a black-market.
> As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller.
So why don't they? Why are they ignoring the infallible wisdom of the great hristov?
Re:The Amazons of the dark net
by hawkice on Sunday November 02, 2014 @09:00PM
(#8548984)
Also worth noting the reason Yelp's reviews are obviously manipulated is that a lot of Yelp's money comes from people paying to be able to manipulate the reviews. Not hard to get better review accuracy than that.
It is rather naive to call that 'rather naive' given that the black-markets have functioned well since January 2011 (so, coming up on 4 years soon). I don't think it would take scammers 4 years to realize that reviews can be faked.
> when even yelp, which is supposed to be completely legal and reviews completely legal businesses has obviously manipulated reviews.
Yelp doesn't control purchases of services and take commissions and only let buyers review, so it's in a different position from the operators of a black-market.
> As I have mentioned before, the police can get you online the way they usually get you -- by having an undercover police agent pretend to be the seller.
So why don't they? Why are they ignoring the infallible wisdom of the great hristov?