Arpeggio Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 A couple of tools to spot fake reviews and Amazon. I use the first mostly. Not always spot on but fairly good. Of course they wont detect the really good fake reviews but can save time compared to your own eyeballs method. https://www.fakespot.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ Don't forget 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake. http://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk/remove-reviews/fake-online-reviews-legal-advice In the US at least this is partly, if not largely, due to section 230 of the Communication Decency Act (1996) which means Amazon, Yelp, Trip Advisor et al. have no legal responsibility over the veracity of their customer reviews whatsoever. If most of their customer reviews were fake they would be in no legal hot water. Interestingly CDA 230 part of what goes on with AirBnB too, in that they are using it to be immune from putting any old rubbish, illegal or not on their listings. https://www.wired.com/2017/01/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a-problem/ This law needs to catch up with commercial speech, would be great to see it do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonriver Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 11 hours ago, Arpeggio said: Don't forget 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake. Gosh I never realised it was that high! Thanks for the "fakespot" info, I will make use of that now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Option5 Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 11 hours ago, Arpeggio said: Don't forget 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake. 70% of all statistics are made up on the spot by 64% of people that produce false statistics 54% of the time they produce them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord D'arcy Pew Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 50 minutes ago, Option5 said: 70% of all statistics are made up on the spot by 64% of people that produce false statistics 54% of the time they produce them. 3/4 of people don't understand percentages, the other 40% can't do fractions. I believe I'm 115% correct on this fact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snafu Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 Will definitely try this out, thanks for the tip! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrMartinSanchez Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 I've just tried Fakespot on Amazon's top rated "Computer gamepad" where it's quite obvious all 89 reviews are fake: https://www.fakespot.com/product/powmax-gapo-pg-9037-bluetooth-wireless-classic-gamepad-game-controller-with-mouse-function-for-samsung-htc-moto-addroid-tv-box-tablet-pc Great thread. Thank you for sharing. Definitely recommend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpeggio Posted October 29, 2017 Author Share Posted October 29, 2017 On 10/27/2017 at 11:14 AM, Option5 said: 70% of all statistics are made up on the spot by 64% of people that produce false statistics 54% of the time they produce them. I compiled the following in 2014 (as far as I recall) so there will be more out there by now of course. First, statements, which give percentages on how many fake reviews there are thought to be. Ranging between 20% and 70%+. Internet Law Centre - “We believe that between 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake” Market Watch – “as many as 30% of online reviews are fake, estimates Bing Liu, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago who researches customer reviews.” BBC – “Research suggests at least 20% of comments posted on review websites are bogus.” Naked Security – “I would venture guess that 30 percent of reviews are real and 70 percent are fake.” Ycombinator - “fake reviews and fake review upvotes very much exist and are WAY more rampant than you'd ever believe. It's an 80/20 or maybe 90/10 problem” http://www.trureview.com/blog/2013/04/trusting-online-reviews-sorting-through-lies/ “But when the MIT Technology Review used an algorithm to analyze reviews, they assessed that more than 70 percent were possibly fake.” http://www.trureview.com/blog/2013/09/fake-reviews-what-to-know-and-how-to-avoid-them/ ”Please! Where did you come up with such a ridiculously exact percentage? I think most folks know as of 21st century 2013 that 90% of yelp reviews are FAKE!” Various Sources Professor Bing Liu (computer science) - “opinion spamming (fake reviews) will get worse and also more sophisticated. Detecting spam reviews or opinions will become more and more critical. The situation is already quite bad.” Professor Bing Liu (again) – “Fake Reviews Extremely Common in E-Commerce” Best Fantasy Books - Don’t Trust Amazon Reviews: They’re Fake ibtimes.co.uk - Blackmailing Customers Hold Hotels to Ransom with TripAdvisor Threat The Guardian - Fake reviews plague consumer websites tripadvisorwarning.com – “TripAdvisor posts fake review accusing father of 3 as being a pedophile” New York Times – “60 percent of the millions of product reviews on Amazon are five stars and an additional 20 percent are four stars. “But almost no one wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created.” tnooz.com - Fake Review Optimization – How black hat masters beat the travel system tripe-advisor.com – “TripAdvisor the worlds largest gutter travel website and online blackmail platform is hugely popular to post unvalidated lies and libel reviews.” datasciencecentral.com - Could Fake Reviews Kill Amazon? Blumenthals.com - Fake Reviews - Everyone is doing it. From within this academic paper "Other commentators claim that fake reviews are so prevalent and are of such sophistication that they are rendering the use of consumer reviews largely ineffective. The evidence that fake reviews are undermining market effectiveness is compelling." newrepublic.com - “people with an agenda find a forum to say anything they please (anonymously)” techcrunch.com - Fake App Reviews seeleyjames.com - This Author does an interesting experiment; “Last February I set up three dummy accounts on Amazon with the intent of creating fake reviews.” BBC (video) - TripAdvisor ruined our business, say B&B owners. tripadvisorwarning.com - “Thick dust on radiator ? what radiator, we don’t have any radiators in the restaurant.” YouTube - Yelp reviews destroying business of 29 years BBC (video) - Fake review accused man of abusing child, lost 80% of business techcrunch.com - Sock Puppet Spectacular: Are Online Reviews Completely Worthless, Or Only Mostly Worthless? Natural News - Internet being wildly polluted with fake reviews, fake complaints against local businesses On this article a commenter says: "By the way, the Amazon site is awash with MILLIONS of fake product reviews." Illinoishomepage - Fake online reviews are growing problem Business Insider – “users who are paid by vendors to buy products at cost and then write positive reviews” Ciarán O'Riordan - "In 2004, a technical glitch on amazon.ca caused the site to display commenters real names instead of their nickname. It turned out that many of the comments by "readers" were actually posted by the author or publisher of the book." (How did Amazon not know this?) BodyPiercingNews.com - “In an informal survey taken by the BodyPiercingNews.com we found that when asked if business reviews could be trusted at face value, only a mere 11% said they thought they were real” Mike Fieman - Online Ratings Now More Worthless Than Ever Jeff Hancock – The future of Lying Information age - More than half of UK companies have been hit by unfounded criticism and malicious postings - and it’s getting worse GoodReads (forum) - “that member was eventually banned from GR for publicly reporting fake reviews.” Bioware (forum) - “Unfortunately everyone does it, and if anyone is silly enough to buy into the reviews, then the joke's on them.” Information age - The ‘rampant fraud’ of Amazon sellers exposed Naked Security - Facebook: At least 67 million accounts are fake Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpeggio Posted October 29, 2017 Author Share Posted October 29, 2017 On 10/27/2017 at 11:01 AM, moonriver said: Gosh I never realised it was that high! Thanks for the "fakespot" info, I will make use of that now. I prefer ReviewMeta myself but it's all positive moves. According to FakeSpot 40% of Amazon reviews are fake, as follows: http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/28/fake-reviews-shopping-apps-online/ https://hbr.org/2016/07/high-online-user-ratings-dont-actually-mean-youre-getting-a-quality-product "the product with the higher star rating on Amazon.com only received a higher score from Consumer Reports 57% of the time, which is just slightly better than flipping a coin." If anyone has any questions just ask I've a thesis of several chapters on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sledgehead Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 On 10/26/2017 at 11:23 PM, Arpeggio said: A couple of tools to spot fake reviews and Amazon. I use the first mostly. Not always spot on but fairly good. Of course they wont detect the really good fake reviews but can save time compared to your own eyeballs method. https://www.fakespot.com/ https://reviewmeta.com/ Don't forget 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake. http://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk/remove-reviews/fake-online-reviews-legal-advice In the US at least this is partly, if not largely, due to section 230 of the Communication Decency Act (1996) which means Amazon, Yelp, Trip Advisor et al. have no legal responsibility over the veracity of their customer reviews whatsoever. If most of their customer reviews were fake they would be in no legal hot water. Interestingly CDA 230 part of what goes on with AirBnB too, in that they are using it to be immune from putting any old rubbish, illegal or not on their listings. https://www.wired.com/2017/01/the-most-important-law-in-tech-has-a-problem/ This law needs to catch up with commercial speech, would be great to see it do so. dunno if i will use the tools but thanks for all the info. well done m8y Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sledgehead Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 On 10/29/2017 at 10:45 PM, Arpeggio said: I compiled the following in 2014 (as far as I recall) so there will be more out there by now of course. First, statements, which give percentages on how many fake reviews there are thought to be. Ranging between 20% and 70%+. Internet Law Centre - “We believe that between 50 to 65 per cent of all online reviews are fake” Market Watch – “as many as 30% of online reviews are fake, estimates Bing Liu, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago who researches customer reviews.” BBC – “Research suggests at least 20% of comments posted on review websites are bogus.” Naked Security – “I would venture guess that 30 percent of reviews are real and 70 percent are fake.” Ycombinator - “fake reviews and fake review upvotes very much exist and are WAY more rampant than you'd ever believe. It's an 80/20 or maybe 90/10 problem” http://www.trureview.com/blog/2013/04/trusting-online-reviews-sorting-through-lies/ “But when the MIT Technology Review used an algorithm to analyze reviews, they assessed that more than 70 percent were possibly fake.” http://www.trureview.com/blog/2013/09/fake-reviews-what-to-know-and-how-to-avoid-them/ ”Please! Where did you come up with such a ridiculously exact percentage? I think most folks know as of 21st century 2013 that 90% of yelp reviews are FAKE!” Various Sources Professor Bing Liu (computer science) - “opinion spamming (fake reviews) will get worse and also more sophisticated. Detecting spam reviews or opinions will become more and more critical. The situation is already quite bad.” Professor Bing Liu (again) – “Fake Reviews Extremely Common in E-Commerce” Best Fantasy Books - Don’t Trust Amazon Reviews: They’re Fake ibtimes.co.uk - Blackmailing Customers Hold Hotels to Ransom with TripAdvisor Threat The Guardian - Fake reviews plague consumer websites tripadvisorwarning.com – “TripAdvisor posts fake review accusing father of 3 as being a pedophile” New York Times – “60 percent of the millions of product reviews on Amazon are five stars and an additional 20 percent are four stars. “But almost no one wants to write five-star reviews, so many of them have to be created.” tnooz.com - Fake Review Optimization – How black hat masters beat the travel system tripe-advisor.com – “TripAdvisor the worlds largest gutter travel website and online blackmail platform is hugely popular to post unvalidated lies and libel reviews.” datasciencecentral.com - Could Fake Reviews Kill Amazon? Blumenthals.com - Fake Reviews - Everyone is doing it. From within this academic paper "Other commentators claim that fake reviews are so prevalent and are of such sophistication that they are rendering the use of consumer reviews largely ineffective. The evidence that fake reviews are undermining market effectiveness is compelling." newrepublic.com - “people with an agenda find a forum to say anything they please (anonymously)” techcrunch.com - Fake App Reviews seeleyjames.com - This Author does an interesting experiment; “Last February I set up three dummy accounts on Amazon with the intent of creating fake reviews.” BBC (video) - TripAdvisor ruined our business, say B&B owners. tripadvisorwarning.com - “Thick dust on radiator ? what radiator, we don’t have any radiators in the restaurant.” YouTube - Yelp reviews destroying business of 29 years BBC (video) - Fake review accused man of abusing child, lost 80% of business techcrunch.com - Sock Puppet Spectacular: Are Online Reviews Completely Worthless, Or Only Mostly Worthless? Natural News - Internet being wildly polluted with fake reviews, fake complaints against local businesses On this article a commenter says: "By the way, the Amazon site is awash with MILLIONS of fake product reviews." Illinoishomepage - Fake online reviews are growing problem Business Insider – “users who are paid by vendors to buy products at cost and then write positive reviews” Ciarán O'Riordan - "In 2004, a technical glitch on amazon.ca caused the site to display commenters real names instead of their nickname. It turned out that many of the comments by "readers" were actually posted by the author or publisher of the book." (How did Amazon not know this?) BodyPiercingNews.com - “In an informal survey taken by the BodyPiercingNews.com we found that when asked if business reviews could be trusted at face value, only a mere 11% said they thought they were real” Mike Fieman - Online Ratings Now More Worthless Than Ever Jeff Hancock – The future of Lying Information age - More than half of UK companies have been hit by unfounded criticism and malicious postings - and it’s getting worse GoodReads (forum) - “that member was eventually banned from GR for publicly reporting fake reviews.” Bioware (forum) - “Unfortunately everyone does it, and if anyone is silly enough to buy into the reviews, then the joke's on them.” Information age - The ‘rampant fraud’ of Amazon sellers exposed Naked Security - Facebook: At least 67 million accounts are fake what a great list. thanks for sharing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sledgehead Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 and it occurs to me: The Internet Dream : you'll never be alone in your woes, no matter how embarrassing. The Internet Reality : you'll be bullied and trolled 24/7. The Internet Dream : in depth news, when you want it, on whatever topic you like. The Internet Reality : fake news. The Internet Dream : efficient sifting of product through mass reviewing, ensuring only the best survive. The Internet Reality : fake reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Austin Allegro Posted November 1, 2017 Share Posted November 1, 2017 Thanks for the review-checking sites. Very useful. One thing I've noticed is a lot of electrical equipment seems to have fake reviews. The reviewers have slightly odd western names usually with a middle initial such as 'Josie C Anderson' or 'Clement G Thurston' etc, and despite the western name the review contains the sort of grammatical errors that non-English speakers would make. Fake reviews for self-published books are pretty easy to spot, as they are always five stars and gushing with praise, 'awesome book!' etc for some totally uninteresting and amateurish twaddle book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpeggio Posted November 1, 2017 Author Share Posted November 1, 2017 On 10/31/2017 at 4:48 PM, Sledgehead said: what a great list. thanks for sharing. Thanks Sledgehead 11 hours ago, Austin Allegro said: Thanks for the review-checking sites. Very useful. One thing I've noticed is a lot of electrical equipment seems to have fake reviews. The reviewers have slightly odd western names usually with a middle initial such as 'Josie C Anderson' or 'Clement G Thurston' etc, and despite the western name the review contains the sort of grammatical errors that non-English speakers would make. Fake reviews for self-published books are pretty easy to spot, as they are always five stars and gushing with praise, 'awesome book!' etc for some totally uninteresting and amateurish twaddle book. Glad you like them. Spread the word! Electrical stuff. Maybe China VAT fraud (as mentioned elsewhere on here). Fake reviews will naturally be part of that. 90% of Apple chargers on Amazon are knock offs: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/10/20/apple-finds-90-of-its-chargers-and-cables-on-amazon-are-fake/ As for books, most award winning books (that aren't gaming the system) get nowhere on Amazon. http://thefutureofpublishing.com/2014/03/how-amazon-destroyed-the-publishing-ecosystem/ quote: "593,710 was the average sales position of the winning titles on Amazon, varying from about 200,000 to about 1.7 million in the listings." This means the IPA award winning books sell about one book per week, 593,710 books sell better (the lower the rank the higher the sales). The ones you can spot aren't trying, no offence.....but then, neither could Einstein spot fake reviews, like how any genius couldn't say what colour the shirt I am wearing is from over the internet *. Generally Fake reviews do work (2 are dead links as these are old now but the quotes I give where there): https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1399161414.html?FMT=ABS Page 67: “The results show that when there are more shill reviews in the review set, perceived product quality increases. This result is true both before and after the consumers read the reviews. After reading the reviews, the effect of shill reviews was even stronger indicating that consumers were unable to detect that reviews were shill reviews and the shill reviews were successful in influencing the assessment about product quality. This finding is consistent with the conclusion by Jindal et al. (2008) who states that it is impossible to distinguish shill reviews from normal reviews even if they are manually read.” Harvard Journal of Law - "It is virtually impossible for an online consumer to determine whether a reviewer is genuinely expressing his opinion of the product or is influenced by other motivations." Academic OneFile, Christou, Corilee - “Studies have shown that humans are not very good at identifying falsehoods; in the studies, humans were actually outperformed by computer algorithmic analysis 90% of the time.” Towards Symmetry in the Law of Branding (PDF) – (Page 977, near bottom) "Stealth marketers are, in fact, often accused of allowing supposedly skeptical reviews to appear alongside the positive ones to make the overall site seem credible and to make the positive reviews seem just a little bit smarter in comparison." Trusting Reviews Found Online - "The worst part is that when I was hired to write some of these reviews, that I was advised to write poorly on purpose so it would look as if different walks of life were reviewing the product, and that it didn't look like a writer was hired to write the review." * I'm not wearing a shirt...genius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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