Hacker News Reader

Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

I've wondered the same thing... I've got a few theories:

-Amazon could identify those fake reviews, but doesn't want to play a cat+mouse game and would rather leave the fake reviews as-is, and easier to spot. If they start targeting harder, the fake reviews will get harder and harder to spot.

-Fake reviews (even 5* reviews) may be placed on products by other sellers in a product category to try and get a product banned. The top ranked seller will earn substantially more than the #2 seller. If you're the #2 seller, pay for a bunch of fake reviews on the #1 seller's product, then gather evidence and submit to Amazon to get the #1 seller's product banned.

-Short-term incentive is for Amazon to leave the reviews (higher scored products get more sales). Seems not too probable, but not sure.

View on HN

> -Short-term incentive is for Amazon to leave the reviews (higher scored products get more sales). Seems not too probable, but not sure.

Amazon has been very fraudster friendly, and without any exaggeration, anti-customer, for a long while. There's several misbehaviors that they tolerate, while at the same time, make it difficult for customers to fight (report, etc.):

- they allow flooding searches with almost-identical products (ebay doesn't)

- they allow replacing a product page with a different one (ebay doesn't)

- they hide shipping prices and actively confuse the customer (ebay doesn't)

- they don't do anything against fakes, even when there are multiple reports (ebay is not great on this, either, though)

There's no reason why Amazon should not (by their strategy, certainly not mine) take advantage of fake reviews.

I worked on this at Amazon a long time ago. One of the goals was to identify and consolidate items that were the same but where sellers intentionally (or accidentally) had split the listing. Amazon has lots of internal metrics showing how correctly matching listings reduces prices for customers and increases sales. Something like 5-7 listings was enough to find a market minimum.

The achilles heal for sellers is that their listings ultimately need to show up When searching for unique information specific to a particular product. They’ll often try to hide that in an unrelated field or in the description. Usually a seller uses the same “trick” for all their listings.

> The achilles heal for sellers is that their listings ultimately need to show up When searching for unique information specific to a particular product. They’ll often try to hide that in an unrelated field or in the description. Usually a seller uses the same “trick” for all their listings.

By unique information, do you mean descriptive adjectives or product features? If so, these terms more often than not show up right in the title:

ProBien Case for iPhone 11, Liquid Silicone Phone Cover w Tempered Glass Screen Protector, Shockproof Durable Protective Rubber Cases Full Body Drop Protection 6.1 for Women Girls-Wine Red

60 Pack Guitar Picks,Cowalkers Abstract Art Random Color Celluloid Guitar Picks Plectrums Unique Guitar Gift For Electric, Bass & Acoustic Guitars Includes 0.46mm/0.71mm/0.96mm

COMFEE' Rice Cooker, Slow Cooker, Steamer, Stewpot, Sauté All in One (12 Digital Cooking Programs) Multi Cooker (5.2Qt ) Large Capacity. 24 Hours Preset & Instant Keep Warm

All of these items were on the first page of results for a single term (iphone 11 case, guitar pick, pressure cooker) so not only is Amazon failing to enforce TOS rules and guidelines against keyword-stuffing, the trick clearly works for sellers.

Amazon and Ebay facilitate fraud on both sides. Amazon, as with Ebay, automates customer complaints to the point of almost no due diligence. There are some very high profile schemes of fraud on the side of buyer where they either claim damages, lost packages, or return empty boxes that force sellers to send replacements or refunds.

Personally I've been able to ask for refunds on Amazon through a 5 minute chat dialogue for products that were months out of the return period (I felt it was in my case because the seller wouldn't honor warranty etc, but this ease of refund/return is abused rampantly on both Amazon and Ebay by buyers).

Someone at Amazon had to have looked at the sales boost fake reviews give and decided to leave them. There is just no way that this hasn't been tested. So if the fake reviews sales increase > decrease in user retention, they decided just let the crap fly. This has probably been concluded more than once.

It is too bad. Ironically eBay used to be the place all the random crap ended up, now when I order something off eBay I expect it to show up in better shape than from Amazon. Amazon turned in to the flea market of the web.

The first reason is interesting to think about. It's similar to how one needs to be careful in prescribing certain antibiotics, otherwise the bacterial will adopt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com