I Investigated the Underground Economy of Glassdoor Reviews | Hacker News Reader

I Investigated the Underground Economy of Glassdoor Reviews

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50 pointsvrisha9 comments

Hey there thanks for sharing. I wrote the original Reddit post - quick TLDR of what I found:

- A prominent Y-Combinator backed startup, in addition to other companies, is buying fake Glassdoor reviews.

- Companies pay between $10-$35 to get a fake review written by freelancers.

- Companies pay between $100-$1000 to get a negative review taken down. Most of these payments are tied to Contingency Agreements (only pay if review is taken down).

- One of the top companies in Glassdoor’s Best Places To Work 2023 rankings seems to have artificially inflated its reviews right before the October deadline last year.

Full article is here: https://www.careerfair.io/company-reviews

What is the value of "Glassdoor’s Best Places To Work"? Is it supposed to help lure in talent?

I don't know anyone (especially at this point) that care about these outside corporate PR/HR teams

- The culture here is bad, the CEO is a douche, and people are leaving, what do we need to do?

- Nothing, we just keep deleting those reviews, until... we quit too and it's no longer our problem!

Being a top ranked Glassdoor company certainly helps in attracting talent. Their scores are a signal that help me determine which company to join/apply. Especially reading reviews of people in my/similar position.

Alot of junior/fresh college grads look at these rankings. Also those in tech, but in more biz/operations/marketing/HR roles seem to take them more seriously. HR teams work for months on getting their companies on these list, often just bribing the companies with sponsorships and more advanced features. BuiltIn is just a survey of employees.

Yes, talent and presumably investment.

Not that what's said on the Glassdoor has anything to do with anything. I've seen enough cases of glaring (epic) discrepancies between what's said on Glassdoor about a certain company, and what I know first or (highly reliable) second hand, to make a firm realization of this fact.

That said, the negative reviews (when they are allowed to slip through) can be quite useful. Caveat emptor, etc.

Could there be RICO [1] prosecutions of companies that profit from fake reviews? This is corruption.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corru...

Question that I want other HN readers to answer with what they think: Do you think the concept of paying for interactions on the internet would have been different if the internet never became privatized? Do you think it would have happened anyway but at a similar pace?

I'm not sure what you are supposing the alternative was. Only state-run sites?

Presumedly some evolution of things like Compuserv and OG AOL.

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