I don't think it's gonna make a difference. At least in Amazon ES, most reviews are written by top reviewers who have made their "career" by first reviewing small products bought by them and after that they're gifted other, bigger products (using 100% OFF coupons so they appear as verified purchases). The moment you find a review with several pictures and paragraph-separated long texts you know it's a paid review with zero value.<p>And Amazon ES is full of those.
The described policy change of requiring a customer to have spent at least $50 to leave a verified review happened in 2016... [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=3742695" rel="nofollow">https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/message.jspa?message...</a>
My latest foray into Amazon review was this. Company contacts me asking to do review. They have me purchase the product with my own money. Then they send me the amount via paypal. So I don't think this policy will stop much assuming they all shift to that model.
I've stopped leaving Amazon reviews. Recently I was bored and went through a few bits of network equipment and PC hardware I purchased and reviewed a few of them. 3/6 of the reviews were rejected for being against community guidelines with no reason provided. Even after reading the guidelines it's not clear why they were rejected. I put in effort to describe why something got its rating from me. For example, I discussed the strengths/weaknesses the network equipment. From now on I might leave a star rating, but I'm not wasting time to get a review accepted. I'll leave that to the shills.
Google crippled their rewards for reviews (1TB for Local Guides dropped to 100GB now nothing) as they gained a critical mass of participants.<p>There has to be a way for Amazon to Mechanical Turk reviews of reviews -- however many layers deep required!