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A friend recommended fakespot to me a few months back. I tested it by pointing it to a product that I'd recently reviewed. It came back saying that the reviews were questionable, giving as an example of a shady review the one I'd just written myself!

Needless to say, I wasn't impressed with their heuristics.

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How do I know that you're not a shill for fakespot?

How does the person reading this comment know I'm not a fakespot competitor?

It's a tricky business, isn't it?

Good point. But, for pedantry's sake, your analogy is backwards. The person you're replying to is questioning the accuracy of Fakespot, which would make them a competitor. A shill would be endorsing the service, or placing doubt on the critical comment, as you have done.

You're totally right. I have no idea how I got that backwards!

Indeed. How do we know some fake-review-review site isn't corrupted and taking money to assassinate competitors?

There should be a site that reviews and rates sites that review and rate reviews, so we could finally know which reviews reviews site to go to to find out which reviews are authentic.

But then we'd need another site that reviews and rates sites that review and rate sites that review and rate reviews.

That's good: there will always be another site to do, our jobs are secured.

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