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Amazon, Amazon reviews, Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Facebook, Facebook groups, fake reviews, Renee DiResta, The Washington Post
As you know, comments on an Amazon page can make or break a product. That’s why the company says that more than 99 percent of its reviews are legitimate because they are written by real shoppers who aren’t paid for them.
But a Washington Post examination by Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg found a majority of reviews in certain categories with certain characteristics such as repetitive wording that people probably cut and paste in. In other words, fake reviews.
Amazingly enough, many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers on dozens of networks, including Amazon Review Club and Amazon Reviewers Group. Shoppers are asked to give glowing feedback in exchange for money or other compensation.
The Law Of Unintended Consequences
As I’ve been reporting (Amazon Steps Up Its Antifraud Efforts, and Amazon Rewrites Review Policy), Amazon has banned paying for reviews because consumers distrust paid reviews. Every once in a while, Amazon purges shoppers who break its policies. But the ban merely pushed an activity that used to take place openly into the underground.
There, an economy of paid reviews has flourished. Merchants pledge to drop reimbursements into a reviewer’s PayPal account within minutes of posting comments for items on Amazon, often sweetening the deal with a $5 commission or a $10 Amazon gift card. Prodded by The Washington Post, Facebook deleted more than a dozen such groups this month alone and Amazon kicked Atgoin, a five-star seller, off its site.
These days it is very hard to sell anything on Amazon if you play fairly. If you want your product to be competitive, you have to somehow manufacture reviews.
A Devastating Practice
Sellers say the flood of inauthentic reviews makes it harder for them to compete legitimately. “It’s devastating, devastating,” said the owner of a baby-products company. He said his product rankings have plummeted in the past year and a half, attributing it to competitors using paid reviews. “We just can’t keep up.” And customers are no less angry. An Amazon Prime customer says he no longer trusts five-star reviews. He sees them as a marker of likely fraud rather than excellence.
Suspicious or fraudulent reviews are crowding out authentic ones in some categories. ReviewMeta is a company which examines red flags, such as an unusually large number of reviews that spike over a short period of time or “sock puppet” reviewers who appear to have cut and pasted stock language.
For example, of the almost 50,000 total reviews for the first 10 products listed in an Amazon search for “bluetooth speakers,” two-thirds were problematic, based on calculations using the ReviewMeta tool.
Amazon aggressively polices its platform for incentivized reviews and has filed five lawsuits since 2015 against people who write paid reviews and companies that solicit them:
“We know that millions of customers make informed buying decisions everyday using Customer Reviews. We take this responsibility very seriously and defend the integrity of reviews by taking aggressive action to protect customers from dishonest parties who are abusing the reviews system. . . . We take forceful action against both reviewers and sellers by suppressing reviews that violate our guidelines and suspend, ban or pursue legal action against these bad actors.”
Facebook vs. Amazon
Problems with the authenticity of Amazon reviews come at a moment of broad public concern over the accuracy of information on online platforms. The spread of Russian disinformation and hoaxes on YouTube and Facebook has raised questions about the role of technology platforms in displaying and amplifying falsehoods, contributing to a feeling of distrust and social division.
Against this climate, a Facebook spokeswoman said:
“We are committed to increasing the good and minimizing the bad across Facebook. . . . There are many legitimate groups on Facebook related to online commerce, but the groups identified misuse our platform.”
Sellers say that Amazon’s position as the top e-commerce destination has spawned a race to master — and game — the company’s systems. More than half of all online product searches start on Amazon. Landing among the first 10 results on an Amazon search can drive an explosion in sales.
To combat fake reviews, Amazon uses artificial intelligence to analyze “hundreds of thousands” of customers who have been banned from leaving reviews and uses the data collected to build computer models of their behavior to predict future techniques.
For two decades, Amazon permitted incentivized reviews, as long as reviewers disclosed that they had received a free or discounted product. But it began cracking down on the practice in 2015, acknowledging its struggles to control it.
“Despite substantial efforts to stamp out the practice,” company lawyers wrote in a lawsuit, “an unhealthy ecosystem is developing outside of Amazon to supply inauthentic reviews.”
The Atgoin Effect
Atgoin, an electronics company based in Shenzen, China, was one such company that leapfrogged to the top of Amazon rankings. In November, its $30 headphones had just a handful of reviews. Then, over a five-day period in December, the product received nearly 300 reviews, almost all of which gave five stars.
ReviewMeta found that more than 90 percent of all the reviews for the Atgoin headphones were suspicious. Many featured repeat phrases, such as “I’ll be using this for my gym workout going forward” and “comfortable to wear.” By early February, the Atgoin headphones, which had 927 reviews, appeared at the top in non-sponsored search results.
It is unclear how Atgoin, which has now been removed as an Amazon seller, obtained the flood of positive reviews. But in February, there were nearly 100 Facebook groups, split up by geographic region and by product categories, in which Amazon merchants actively solicited consumers to write paid reviews. One such group had over 50,000 Facebook members until Facebook deleted it. There are also Reddit boards and YouTube tutorials that coach people on how to write reviews. Websites with names such as Slickdeals and JumpSend let merchants give out discounted products, using a loophole to get around Amazon’s ban.
DiResta’s Experience
Renee DiResta is policy lead for the nonprofit Data for Democracy, a group of technology researchers dedicated to promoting integrity online. She has conducted research on paid Amazon reviews by joining some of the Facebook groups. Her first act was to write “interested” next to a post describing a pair of Bluetooth headphones for $35.99. Almost immediately, a Facebook user called Li sent her a direct message, calling her “dear” and asking for a link to her Amazon profile. If she reviewed the headphones, Li said, he would reimburse her via her PayPal account.
Within an hour of getting this message, DiResta got a slew of direct messages from other sellers, asking her to review tea lights, containers, shower caddies, badge holders, sanding discs, rain ponchos, pocket-size vanity mirrors, and butterfly knives. The messages came in so quickly, she barely had time to respond.
DiResta spent three months monitoring the groups. She observed the sellers using tactics to avoid detection by Amazon, such as focusing on reviewers who have a long history of writing Amazon reviews. The sellers even asked her for screen images showing when she started her profile.
DiResta found that many of the Facebook accounts had no friends on the social network. Their only Facebook posts were about cheap products, and their profile pictures included stock photos. A reverse image search on Li’s profile photo (a man on a beach) revealed a stock photo called “seaside man” that appeared on various Chinese-language lifestyle websites.
The Story Reading Ape said:
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
This doesn’t surprise me at all. It is funny how these people inevitably go so far with this scheme that it becomes blatantly obvious. Yet, they rarely get caught.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
To me, it’s funny how I hear two kinds of feedback in regards to Amazon stomping out scammers: one, that it does nothing. And two, that it goes too far. It seems that many people have made up their mind about the company 🙂
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Charles Yallowitz said:
I’ve wondered about those polar opposites and think it could be both. Amazon seems to be paying minimal attention to a problem until it becomes really big or gets mentioned a lot in the media. Then, they try to fix it by acting on a grand scale. It’s usually so quick and widespread that you get innocents caught up in the net. To be fair, Twitter did this recently with their bot elimination that I got sucked up into for a day.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
That’s what you get from using technology to solve what’s essentially an ethics problem.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
True. Ever think about the jobs they could create if they had humans even check what the hunting programs do?
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
If your goal is to stimulate the US economy, keep in mind that such jobs would most likely be given to India or the Philippines, of course.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
Probably. Only way to prevent that is if the company decides to do it here regardless of the expensive. Couldn’t even write that with a straight face.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
No easy solution, I’m afraid. It’s easy to see why people are upset at globalization, even if I personally believe the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
Machines doing more basic jobs aren’t helping. The issue will be how do societies survive with a smaller job pool.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
In Ancient Greece, they used slaves instead of machines. In the case of Athens, this allowed a lively Democracy and a golden age. The optimist in me hopes for a similar outcome.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
There was still the issue of slaves though. While robots won’t require money, food, or anything other than maintenance, you will end up getting a larger percentage of the population in poverty. If people need to work to live, but there aren’t any jobs then you come closer to a dystopia with a massive class gap. To make it work, society would have to allow for people to survive without making money, but that’s probably not in the cards. At the very least, people could be allowed to pursue their dreams to make money.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
The Utopian version of this is that people *won’t* need to work to live. That will be the robots’ job. So, work will be mostly for identity or prestige purposes.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
I always wonder if we should work towards that. People being able to do what they love instead of what they have to do would make a happier population. Yet, we would have to figure out a way to remove the concept of money and wealth from society. Don’t really see that happening after so many centuries.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
We’ve spent some 200,000 years without money and under 10,000 with it. It doesn’t sound like such a big deal to unlearn it 🙂
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Charles Yallowitz said:
One would hope, but it would require a massive social upheaval. Not to mention resistance from those who have plenty of money. A billionaire could fall to the bottom of society (or worse become equal with others) if we put more importance on something other than money. You would need the ruling class to either fall from grace or be composed of those who aren’t driven by greed. Not an easy feat to achieve in this day and age.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
There’s always going to be a ruling class. The question is how it’s defined. Plato preferred philosophy. That’s why he went to the Syracuse when the local tyrant asked him to help him train in philosophy. Sadly for Plato, when said tyrant tired of him, he sold him off as a slave.
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Charles Yallowitz said:
How would philosophy work here? I see some that are oddly war-like and starts to border on religious zeal. That could cause problems of its own. Maybe humans are far too tribal and violent for utopias in general.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
You’re mistaking philosophy for organized religion 🙂
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Charles Yallowitz said:
Yet, religions do have a philosophical aspect to them. Philosophies can go down the same route just like anything else. You can see it on the Internet with people claiming how things should be and then getting angry if disagreed with. It’s really nothing more than humans gathering around a central idea and then refusing to listen to any others.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Not quite what Plato had in mind 🙂
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Charles Yallowitz said:
To be fair, things rarely turn out the way we expect them. 😉
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acflory said:
Great post and mind blowing information. I have no idea how or even if, Amazon will be able to fix this mess. In the meantime, us poor authors live with the consequences. 😦
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Pretty much…
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marymichaelschmidt said:
Reblogged this on When Angels Fly.
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claire plaisted said:
Reblogged this on Plaisted Publishing House and commented:
Interesting Post. It is good that people take notice of reviews…However many innocent folks get banned by mistake as well. The fake review war has many levels to sort through.
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Gwen Plano said:
Thank you, Nicholas. I’ve had many requests for product reviews in exchange for a deep discount on the product or a free item; but, in all honesty, I’ve not had an author request a review in exchange for funds. I had no idea that much of this practice has its origins in facebook. 😦
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you, Gwen! You’re right; as most of these scams seem to originate in China, I doubt that many authors are using it.
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The Owl Lady said:
Reblogged this on Viv Drewa – The Owl Lady.
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Pingback: Facebook Floods Amazon With Fake Reviews | Campbells World
Peter Rey said:
When digital publishing and the Internet was still to come, when I entered a bookstore I spent hours reading pages of the books whose titles and covers arose my curiosity. I rarely read reviews, and only once in a while I bought something because a friend had told me it was great.
So, even though it can sound like a heretic suggestion… what about a website where reviews are simply forbidden, but where descriptions are extremely detailed and precise?
Of course, I know this is not going to happen. Yet… amazon is such a giant it could try some experiments along these lines…
Knowledge is power, I know. But with reviews that are way too often fake we don’t have any kind of real knowledge, quite the opposite in fact. And at the moment AI and BOTS can and do harm a lot of innocent people.
Have a nice day =)
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Thank you, Peter. In a sense, it’s sad when the only way forward seems to be a step backward 🙂
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Peter Rey said:
Of course, of course. The problem with technology is that it empowers people without having first ethically prepared them. More than a step backward we need a leap forward, but not a technological one =)
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Monique Desir said:
Reblogged this on adaratrosclair.
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Solitaire said:
I am tired of both of Facebook and Amazon!
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Lol-fair enough. Hard to sell any books without the, though!
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Pingback: Facebook Floods Amazon With Fake Reviews | Ann Writes Inspiration
kimwrtr said:
Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Blog.
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OIKOS™-Redaktion said:
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Michelle Morrison said:
Thanks for passing this along. I tend to be suspicious about products that have a lot of glowing reviews. My reasoning for that is even if a product is good, it’s wouldn’t be realistic for everyone to like it. I mostly buy e-books and digital movies from Amazon. I haven’t tried to sell anything at this point, but it’s still good information to have. I don’t do a lot of reviews on Amazon either, and I attempt to be objective and point out the pros and cons of what I review.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
I try to review everything I read. Which is sad, as it reminds me of how little I read nowadays 🙂
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Michelle Morrison said:
Well, you have a young child to take care of, so I’m sure that takes up much of your time. I don’t review every book I read; I focus more on reading.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
True; the wee one’s more work than I imagined 😀
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Michelle Morrison said:
I worked as a preschool teacher a number of years ago, and I have nieces and nephews I helped take care of when they were little. They aren’t so little any more.
🙂 Children are time consuming even if they aren’t your own. LOL.
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Don Massenzio said:
Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio and commented:
Check out this interesting post from Nicholas Rossis’ blog on the topic of Facebook flooding Amazon with fake reviews
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Anna Dobritt said:
Reblogged this on Anna Dobritt — Author.
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robbiesinspiration said:
Very interesting post. I knew Amazon was cracking down on the book reviewers and you have to have spent $50 on the site to post reviews there. I do understand the problem Amazon faces.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
It’s not easy solving with technology what’s essentially a human ethics problem!
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Adele Marie said:
Reading your post, I was reminded that I’m being hit by false facebook profiles want to be my “friend”, I wonder if this has links to false reviews?
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
Most likely! Linking to real people is their way of appearing legit. Nice catch 🙂
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gavinrebeiro said:
I’ve been suspecting this ‘review market’ going in the other direction as well; by that I mean that I’m suspecting companies paying people to leave negative reviews on products of competitors.
I would be very interested in reading about any research done on this topic. Thank you for the informative article, Nicholas.
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Nicholas C. Rossis said:
I, too, have heard plenty of stories indicating a market for negative reviews does exist. I’ll let you know if I come across some relevant research!
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