Went to Google Play to complain about Hulu. I noticed Google advertising that over 300 reviews had the verbatim quote “watch and movies that you love”. It’s always confusing that buggy corporate apps have >95% 5 star reviews until you see that the majority are just completely fake, and no one cares or is doing anything about it.
The only use reviews have is to make sure that the app youre downloading is most likely the original and not a malicious lookalike.
Artificial content has poisoned the web to the point that adding “reddit” to the end of google searches so that you could get real human content was commonplace.
I miss the days where you had to learn HTML if you wanted to share your opinions online.
adding “reddit” to the end of google search
As if there’s no astroturfing on Reddit :) there’s plenty of companies in the comments there, posts promoting particular brands or products that get to the front page, etc.
It’s only a bandaid over a gaping wound, but check out Fakespot, an extension for Firefox and Chrome. It won’t help with google play, but when browsing Amazon, BestBuy, or other retailers they use machine learning to detect duplicate/repetitive reviews, and go into reviewers’ history to determine if they are trustworthy.
I’ve seen a lot of “5 star products” get an adjusted rating of <2 because of this extension.
I have an axe to grind with fakespot. My wife has a tiny business and is one of the most honest and sweet people I know. She would never pay for fake reviews and she wouldn’t even have the knowledge on how to do so. Someone (not even us, mind you) posted a link to her product on Reddit and a Fakespot robot instantly called her out for supposedly having suspicious reviews, even though each and every order (and thus each and every review resulting from that) was legit. Her product was then mocked and all it did was give my wife stress.
So yeah, take them with a grain of salt. They are probably pretty good on average but some innocent people get caught in it as collateral damage.
Haha I see what you mean. If it works as suggested that would actually help me out a lot though, thats why I got excited. There are certain types of products where I know from the start that 99% of the reviews are fake. There cant be 50.000 people buying the exact same model of screen protector for my noname phonethat not even 50k people own.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
- Goodhart’s law
Advertisers made it a target to have a high review score so now they are just another advertising cost.
SEO did the same to the web.
Bots and now AI are infecting social spaces as users figured out reviews are now shit and would turn to special interest groups.
I agree with you, but look where the money is at. Google and Amazon and the rest want to take a cut of the money you give these apps and goods. It loses them money if they police these things.
That’s why strong regulation can be a good thing, keep the capitalists in check at least a tiny bit.
I’m absolutely sick of corporate astroturfing. That’s why I use Crelm toothpaste, with the miracle indredient Frauduline.
