Is It Against the Amazon Tos to Do a Paid Review
In shadow marketplaces, positive reviews for Amazon products are bought and sold. The company says information technology'south cracking downwardly and that information technology estimates that less than one percent of reviews are fake. Mike Segar/Reuters hide caption
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Mike Segar/Reuters
In shadow marketplaces, positive reviews for Amazon products are bought and sold. The company says it's cracking down and that it estimates that less than ane percent of reviews are false.
Mike Segar/Reuters
Travis is a teenager living in a pocket-sized town in the Northeast. He enjoys hunting and shooting, and keeps a rifle at abode. But with several younger siblings around the firm, he wanted to brand certain his gun was safe. Then he ordered a trigger lock on Amazon, to prevent the gun from firing.
"The reviews were great, five-star reviews," says Travis, who asked that NPR utilize only his commencement name to avert scrutiny and possible legal attention. "[They] said information technology worked bully, locked perfectly, the combination system worked bang-up."
It didn't.
"The combination doesn't fifty-fifty affair; the lock merely opens," Travis says. "Information technology'south cheap plastic, it will pull apart every bit soon as you give it whatever forcefulness."
Thankfully, he realized this immediately, went to a store, and purchased a proper trigger lock for his gun. Anybody at dwelling house is fine.
Travis rues the experience, and the stellar reviews that led him to purchase the faulty lock in the showtime place. He didn't realize it at the time, he says, simply he's now certain that those glowing reviews were paid for. And that many of the people who gave the trigger lock excellent reviews may never accept opened the bundle in the showtime place.
Travis is certain of this considering he himself is now a prolific paid reviewer. He writes Amazon reviews for money, and he commissions others to do the aforementioned — for a company that approached him online. (Note: Amazon is one of NPR's financial sponsors.)
"I don't think information technology's correct that people tin write fake reviews on products," Travis says. "Simply I demand the money."
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 due east-commerce sites, outside auditors say, and they proliferate in online channels fix up for this purpose.
Much like Amazon itself is a marketplace for goods, a earth of separate, shadow marketplaces exists where reviews for Amazon products are bought and paid for — individual Facebook groups, Slack channels, subreddits and more than.
According to exterior auditors like Fakespot and ReviewMeta, more than one-half the reviews for sure popular products are questionable. Amazon disputes those estimates.
"Our approximation is that less than one per centum of reviews are inauthentic," says Sharon Chiarella, vice president of community shopping at Amazon. She adds that "sometimes individual products have more suspicious action."
"We have built a lot of technology to assess whether or not we think a review is accurate," Chiarella says. "The star rating, a lot of people recall that's an average ... it's actually much more intelligent. Information technology's a weighted calculation that gives more weight to reviews we trust more and less to reviews we trust less."
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 amendment bad actors to get data from them. "That allows us to place more bad actors and spider out from there and railroad train our algorithms," she says.
But this has led to a sort of digital cat-and-mouse game. As Amazon and its algorithms go better at hunting them downward, paid reviewers employ their own evasive maneuvers. Travis, the teenage paid reviewer, explained his procedure.
He's a member of several online channels where Amazon sellers congregate, hawking Ethernet cables, flashlights, protein powder, fanny packs — any number of minor items for which they want favorable reviews.
If something catches Travis' attention, he approaches the seller and they negotiate terms. Once he buys the product and leaves a five-star review, the seller will refund his purchase, often adding a few dollars "committee" for his trouble. He says he earns around $200 a month this way.
The sellers provide detailed instructions, to avoid existence detected by Amazon's algorithms, Travis says. For example, he says, "Order here at the Amazon link. Don't clip whatsoever coupons or promo codes. [Wait 4 to 5 days] afterward receiving [the particular]." This last instruction is especially important, Travis adds. "If you review too presently after receiving it'll await pretty suspicious."
Renée DiResta says these persistent efforts to game the system amount to a sort of whack-a-mole problem for Amazon. DiResta researches disinformation online every bit director of research at New Knowledge, and is a Mozilla Young man on media, misinformation and trust.
As role of her research, DiResta said she wrote her own paid reviews through the same kind of marketplaces that Travis frequents.
"Existence on the first folio of Amazon is profoundly impactful for businesses," DiResta says. "Doing well on Amazon really makes or breaks brands."
She says the types of companies commissioning paid reviews are frequently Chinese brands selling on the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. They're looking to penetrate the U.Southward. market.
"If you order from Alibaba, it'southward going to take six to eight weeks to make it; it'southward not a great experience," DiResta says. "If you buy on Amazon, it feels like a protected transaction."
She adds that by using Amazon to drift their products to the U.Due south. market, these sellers can take advantage of Amazon Prime'southward superior shipping and logistics, as well every bit the reputation and trust that comes with the Amazon brand. Not to mention the cachet of its user reviews.
"That'southward potentially deeply harmful to Amazon as a make," DiResta says. "When people begin to realize what they're buying is cheap junk or won't concord up."
In the end, DiResta says, this problem may non have a solution. Equally Amazon keeps cracking downwards, paid reviewers will keep finding ways to evade the company's attempts. Customers tin can turn to exterior review sites like CNET or Wirecutter to find transparent information. But as long as there's a business organization incentive to game them, online user reviews will remain dingy waters.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/30/629800775/some-amazon-reviews-are-too-good-to-be-believed-theyre-paid-for
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