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Comment by riazrizvi | Hacker News Reader

I've been using https://www.fakespot.com to flag bullshit reviews for a few months now. After many happy purchases informed by its review analysis, I believe it works.

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How can we believe you?

: )

Well don't take it on trust, validate it works. And keep validating it still works, because one day it won't. Everyone seems to sell out in the end.

What do you mean by "validate it"?

I've used fakespot for purchases for a while now. I feel that it's helped me avoid bad products. Thus... it's validated (at lease for myself)

It's impossible to validate. Further for all we know Fakespot (which curiously has been mentioned multiple times) might itself be a fake that undermines products that are sponsored, etc. It probably isn't, I'm just saying.

? You could manually analyze the reviewers for suspicious non-specificity, typical of paid reviewers for whom it is not cost effective to write a tailored review when they are being paid pennies per post. Also over time you could compare the quality of products that it says have fake reviews vs ones it says does not.

But how can I trust what you're saying? What if you've been paid off by Fakespot?

That's why I'm launching my new website, SpotFakeFakeSpot, which helps spot fake fake review spotting sites. I got the idea from my time as a sales rep selling radar detector detectors to police departments.

Thanks.

I had no idea there's a full scale electronic war on the streets of my city.

You have no idea, man. Radar detectors these days even have radar detector detector detectors built in.

Would be amazing if fakespot runs the whole fake review business and therefore can tell you which ones are fake. Wait until this becomes a paid service.

Probably not, though, so more likely the fake reviewers will find a way to avoid its detection algorithm at some point.

How do you determine a review is bullshit? Do you only flag reviews for items you've bought?

5 stars.

Very generic positive language.

Poor grammar and or spelling.

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The only sure way is to click on the profile and read the rest of their reviews.

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