An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NPR spoke with several people who write Amazon reviews for pay, from a college student in Puerto Rico to a stay-at-home mother in the Midwest. Such reviews are a problem on e-commerce sites, outside auditors say, and they proliferate in online channels set up for this purpose. Much like Amazon itself is a marketplace for goods, a world of separate, shadow marketplaces exists where reviews for Amazon products are bought and paid for — private Facebook groups, Slack channels, subreddits and more. According to outside auditors like Fakespot and ReviewMeta, more than half the reviews for certain popular products are questionable. Amazon disputes those estimates.
Amazon looks for suspicious patterns of behavior that might indicate a paid or incentivized review. Penalties for cheating can be harsh — in the past three years, Amazon has sued more than 1,000 sellers for buying reviews. Chiarella says the lawsuits give the company the opportunity to subpoena bad actors to get data from them. But this has led to a sort of digital cat-and-mouse game. As Amazon and its algorithms get better at hunting them down, paid reviewers employ their own evasive maneuvers. In the end this problem may not have a solution. As Amazon keeps cracking down, paid reviewers will keep finding ways to evade the company’s attempts. Customers can turn to outside review sites like CNET or Wirecutter to find transparent information. But as long as there’s a business incentive to game them, online user reviews will remain muddy waters.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot