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I consider "Top 500 Reviewer" to be sign of someone who has made a hobby (if not a career) of receiving free stuff in exchange for writing reviews of said stuff. Makes it much easier to identify which reviews to ignore due to the reviewer having a definite conflict of interest.

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I actually agree, and when I'm considering an Amazon purchase I find myself browsing all of the reviews for a particular reviewer, just to see how thoughtful they are.

Even so, Amazon's flavor of content curation has been a major part of their success story, and they mark their top 500 reviewers with a special tag for a reason - customers derive value from it (it's a badge of trust, in a way).

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