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Comment by Magnets | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like the classic excuses you get from chinese sellers, they say their boss will punish them if you've left a bad review, aliexpress will punish their store, company will close etc.

It's no problem though, they can just keep sending out free review units to get their 4 and 5 star reviews. 2 verified purchases from 11 reviews, and one of those got it for free or heavily discounted "The AuYou Power Socket arrived very fast & was packaged well. I received it for an honest & unbiased review"

That is what's really killing Amazon reviews, free products in exchange for 5-star reviews.

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As soon as I see that phrasing, I close the tab and move on to a different product. If you need to buy your reviews, I'm not buying your product. I see it a lot, which is making shopping on Amazon extremely unpleasant. I wish Amazon would crack down on these obviously paid-for reviews.

What is interesting is that Amazon had the "Amazon Vine" Program which clearly listed that people received the product for free (or at a discount). But for whatever reason that has fallen out of fashion, and now manufacturers recruit outside to get unmarked reviews which sometimes don't list the potential conflict of interests.

I wonder if this behaviour violates FTC's rules[0], I know it was a big thing on YouTube (YT channels failing to disclose financial incentives/conflicts of interests).

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc...

I have purchased many things from China on eBay and am now getting spam offering me free products if I review them.

I'm sure that Amazon or any site could detect and cull these reviewers, but would it be in their best interests to do so?

Is Vine discontinued? My buddy still does it, at least until recently

A lot of participants quit a year ago when Amazon began issuing 1099s so participants would pay tax on goods received.

Why do so many have that exact wording "honest and unbiased review"? So bizarre

I'm guessing it's lawyer-specified boilerplate that spreads in the same manner as the ALL CAPS type of language you see in software licenses.

What's the deal with ALL CAPS PARTS in certain legal documents, anyway? It can't possibly carry any legal weight...?

I saw someone say once that it is done to fulfil a legal obligation to make certain clauses obvious and noticeable, or a similar phrasing in contract law.

The Universal Commercial Code requires some terms be "conspicuous" in transactions, and says you can satisfy that requirement with all caps text of equal or greater size than the nearby text. There are some other options, like changing color or alternate fonts, but those are generally just more complicated.[0]

An example of a contract term that must be conspicuous is selling something "as is," ie, claiming no warranty that the thing even works at all.[1]

A note on Universal Codes - nonprofits, usually mostly made up of lawyers, will write model codes for state laws and then try to get them passed in each state so that state laws are predictable. Almost all states have adopted some provisions from the UCC, but several states have adopted modified versions or old revisions.[2]

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/article2

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Act

>There are some other options, like changing color or alternate fonts, but those are generally just more complicated.

The all caps thing is a holdover from the era of typewriters. On most typewriters, switching to bold face required changing the daisywheel or type ball; alternate colours would be lost on xerox- or carbon-copied documents. All caps was the most convenient option.

It's now a vestigial convention, like the floppy disk save icon.

Software licences are often written in plain text. There is no bold and no colour in asci text so uppercase is the only option.

Because they are revealing that they are actually fake and one-sided.

It's like the last time I bought a car at a dealership I got the line "I'll be honest, I haven't sold a car all week and I'll really work with you if you buy one today." Immediate tip-off that he's lying through his teeth.

Completely agree. "I'll be honest" is right up there with "I'm not a racist, but..." in the list of phrases that always self-negate.

Unfortunately, someone who reads this might interact with someone who is claiming to be honest, and truly is being honest.

Never trust a salesman because they're salesman, not because you think you can read their speech and body language.

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