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Comment by hippich | Hacker News Reader

first of all it is illegal to lie like that. so most reviewers will not do that.

also, amazon employs statistic engine (i am afraid to call it ai yet) and also a lot of humans who constantly monitor content (results of which goes back into stats engine)

so yes - they can enforce it on a global scale.

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It certainly is not illegal to lie like that, or astroturfing would be illegal. Sometimes lawsuits arise from astroturfing, but the practice itself is legal.

You're wrong. Here's an example:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/07/warne...

Well, he's right in the sense that it's not illegal to lie - it's the companies paying the people who don't disclose who bear the liability.

I think it's a stretch to think most reviewers will care about the legality (especially because it's pretty unlikely to get enforced against them) but it may get the "career reviewers." I wonder what proportion of these reviews are from those "whales."

Every once in a while the FTC goes on a rampage and Amazon not doing due diligence to ensure product reviews it uses to sell it's wares poses too much of an organizational risk as its one of the largest targets out there.

I know from first-hand experience that as soon as you ask to deviate from a more or less standard workflow on leaving a review in exchange for a discounted product, MOST reviewers flock away. Of course very few reviewers might do illegal things, but these will be minority and highly unscalable for a purposes of launching product (plus these people will be quickly caught by amazon itself)

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