Item — HN Reader

Two thoughts--

1. I'm not at all surprised, I've known this kind of thing has been going on and I'm sure it's largely underreported. Heck, the previous place I worked constantly asked employees to give five star reviews to the app we wrote. Multiple places I worked have asked us to write good glassdoor reviews.

2. It entirely undermines the integrity of rating systems, as only a couple extreme reviews can do major damage to a rating. This is the marketplace's problem as much as it is the community's, and some marketplaces (e.g. Amazon) have taken up suing fake/paid reviews.

So I'm not surprised, but I think it's abhorrent and does huge damage to the marketplace as a whole (I'll watch fewer movies if I can't trust ratings).

3 comments

> It entirely undermines the integrity of rating systems

Huh? I didn't know online rating systems had any integrity to begin with. Who actually believes these things anymore? Between the "paid reviewer" cottage industry, competitors (and the reviewed company) trying to stuff the ballot box, and filtering shenanigans from the ratings sites themselves, there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that an online ratings have anything to do with actual customer feedback.

For every company (and their competitors) whose products get rated online, you should assume their marketing department is all over all of the high-profile ratings sites (Yelp, Amazon, etc.)

> Who actually believes these things anymore?

I find them useful. You can often filter for people trying to rig them. For example have a look at the reviews for the film in question http://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B017V4J3NC/ref=acr_sea...

You can tell a) the films good b) it's now biased positively (5/5) as the negative ones have been deleted and everyone is voting 5 to stick up for it. It's probably really a 4.5/5 I'd guess.

I'd say both of you are correct. Sure, it undermines the integrity of the system, but you should take all reviews with a grain of salt. There are countless Amazon reviews saying "I ordered this, and haven't it yet, but I'm excited, 5 stars!"

I feel like some kinds of misleading reviews could be limited by automated systems. Package tracking indicates that the product is still in transit and you haven't actually received it yet? You can't post a review.

Also, it's frustrating to see reviews where, say, the customer complains about the late delivery or the packaging of an item provided by a third party seller -- completely irrelevant to the quality of the item itself.

> Who actually believes these things anymore?

I find that -as long as one keeps in mind that (just like everything on the Internet) any given review might be written by either a shill or a madman- Newegg's reviews give me a good idea of what to expect from a given product.

1. Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment. Amazon reviews, OTOH, are not meant to be about reviews by the salespeople of the company in question.

2. Suing is hugely expensive, but having some sort of tracking (even better if linked to real identity, such as credit cards, etc. - without displaying one) of the reviewer's own reputation might help. I.e. if we knew one Uriel Halioua has a track record of trashing critics of his company, one could dismiss his reviews. Of course, making custom score calculations on Amazon scale would be hugely computationally expensive...

> Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment.

Agreed, it's no different than a restaurant asking you to give them a good rating on Tripadvisor or whatever. You can even argue it's good for future employees/customers, since someone with a nice experience might not even think about reviewing it, and you end up getting mostly the bad reviews. It's ok as long as there is no coercion.

> Asking for Glassdoor reviews is kind of OK, since Glassdoor is meant for employees to write about their employment.

But asking for "good Glassdoor reviews"?

That's a shitty practice that's in the same class as "Politely suggest that all employees vote for $CANDIDATE in $UPCOMING_ELECTION" or somewhat similar to the District President doing: "At the end of an all-hands meeting, mention that employee contributions to the company lobbyist have dramatically fallen off recently, present and drop on to the presenter's table a stack of ~1000 contribution forms, pull one off of the top, and fill it out, announcing that you're making your contribution right here and now and that -while you're not instructing anyone to do so- everyone is more than welcome to do the same.".

> some marketplaces (e.g. Amazon) have taken up suing fake/paid reviews

So, do you think it's likely that Amazon will sue these reviewers? Think carefully about the lobbying chain before answering.