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Do you trust online reviews? Now that Amazon is suing more than 1,000 people who allegedly offered to write glowing product reviews for cash, you might reasonably be concerned.
Turns out, deceptive reviews are commonplace online—and so are doubts about them. The research organization Mintel found that 57 percent of surveyed consumers are suspicious of companies or products that only have positive online reviews. And 49 percent believe companies probably give incentives for online reviews.
Fortunately, there are a few good techniques that can help you tell truth from fiction.
The article lists several ways to tell the difference. What are yours?
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:26PM
> I have long learned I cannot trust anything nice said on the Internet.
Quite a few years ago Amazon effed up and revealed the true names of reviewers for a day or so. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books. Since then, Amazon has started rejecting any book reviews by known authors, positive or negative. But that doesn't apply to other merchandise.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Thursday October 22 2015, @02:30PM
Quite a few years ago Amazon effed up and revealed the true names of reviewers for a day or so. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books.
I'm not sure if it was a bad thing :)
But yes you do bring up a good point. If they can't make themselves look good, they can always make the competition look bad. I know that my system is only a small hack, soon to be obliterated by fake negative reviews. But for now it works for me. In the future we will have to only go by word of mouth from people we know. Which will mean the death of new products, and death of marketing in general (I HOPE!).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 22 2015, @09:18PM
. Turned out that lots of authors were leaving 1-star reviews for competing books.
Spawning what later was to be known as the Spamming of the Hugos by the Sad and Rapid Puppies.