Good. This is but a drop in the shill review bucket, these days, but it’s a start.
Why doesn’t Amazon just drop the sellers who buy the shill reviews?
That can backfire pretty badly if they don’t have solid proof.
Because then Amazon would have no products left to sell. Seriously, that shit is PERVASIVE. But if they can at the very least catch the most obvious perpetrators, they’re heading in the right direction.
I’m sure Amazon’s TOS are strongly written in favor of Amazon being able to remove any seller for any reason whatsoever.
Sure, but you don’t want everyone to buy shill reviews for their competitors.
And the arms race is on.
It’s probably too little too late. The reviews on ebooks (especially those that are self-published) are a farce, so much so that it’s really damn hard to find anything worth reading under, say, Kindle Unlimited- or at least it has been the time or two they’ve offered me a trial.
Call me cynical but if positive reviews help sell products I don’t see why Amazon would have a problem with it.
Because when it’s ALL 5 star, glowing reviews, people see through the farce and suddenly NO reviews are trusted, and they don’t help sell products at all.
My mother had never heard the phrase “tragedy of the commons”
True enough. Once the reviews become worthless, less information is available to the consumer. The assymetry of information means that well-marketed, but inferior products become more successful and common, and we are all worse off. Except for the marketers of shitty products.
Any retailer that step up from the homgenized baseline of worthless reviews will win. It’s a battle worth waging, but that is difficult. Amazon may be better of investing is their own (or an independent) professional review service(s) and simply closing down public reviews.
Of course, there you run into the issue of “do consumers trust you (or your independent third party) to be impartial?” - and it takes an awful lot of time to build up the kind of consumer good will to believe in that.
5 star might get my attention, but I usually make my final decision based on the 3 star reviews – they are usually relatively balanced with pros and cons.
For the first few paragraphs I read this as “shrill” reviews and though, “I’ve written some pretty shrill reviews! Hope I don’t get sued!”
Then I read carefully and understood.
That’s why Amazon has their own shill reviewers – Amazon Vine. They get free stuff in exchange for an “unbiased” review.
This lawsuit hugely increased my efficiency at work! I really like the brightness of the LEDs!
Five stars, would be sued again!
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