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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

directly monetizing the review process will only lead to more bad actors

see Amazon's problem with fake reviews, there is a financial incentive in the system already

That's a fair observation but do you think the problem is that incentives were not designed properly for the system to flourish. I mean, right now the incentives on Amazon are not technically incentives. You are straight up paid for a review or you hire your friends/family to do the same. If you can clearly incentivize good behavior, maybe everyone could make money and the system will still be less fraud prone.

Bad actors are incentivized without needing direct payments by using fake reviews. They actually put money in because they can get more out. If you start paying for reviews, I would expect this to get worse. While fraud is partially a financial problem, it's really more of a moderation problem, which Amazon does not seem to have the incentive to fix properly. It's also a cat & mouse game.

Bringing cryptos and tokens to the problem is not going to fix this. The best and most helpful reviews are by truly happy customers who need no financial incentive.

You might also look into the sponsored "product reviews" by "content creators" and how they are, more often than not, fluff and praise for money. If you give an honest review for a bad product, you hurt you ability to get future sponsorships.

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