> When the reward of being dishonest is (seemingly) greater than the risk, no person or company is accountable: The entire system is at fault.<p>This dynamic is a great factor in many overarching issues today. In politics, it's so easy to get stuck on ideology, ethics or morality. But in practice, it comes down to incentive structure. And carrot usually works better than tick, for several reasons.<p>Consider the problem of tax evasion in retail. Greece is imposing fines on those who conduct a large enough ratio of their transactions in cash[0]. Taiwan solved this more elegantly in 1951, IMO, with introducing a lottery with a number coming up on each receipt, thereby creating an incentive for consumers to ask for a receipt[1].<p>0: <a href="https://fortune.com/2019/12/16/greece-digital-economy-cashless-fines/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/2019/12/16/greece-digital-economy-cashle...</a><p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Invoice_lottery" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Invoice_lottery</a>
There seems to be a lot less gaming of the negative than the positive reviews. So on Amazon, etc. I like to read the worst reviews and see if they talk me out of buying.<p>I suppose if this approach catches on, scammers will spend more time denigrating competitors than boosting their own products, and it'll become less effective.
That's not a false economy, that's the only economy that started since it's inception. Information asymmetry and game theory talks a lot about it
What should we/they do?<p>Even in real-life, you're never sure, when someone recommends a product, be it a salesman in a brick and mortar store ("this one here is a lot better then that one there", even at the same price, could mean different profits). With platforms like youtube, you have atleast minimal trust in a few youtubers you follow regularly (and this literally means "a few"), but doing a random search means 80% chance the reviewer got sponsoder or atleast received the product for free in exchange for a good review. Star systems on sellers pages have their own sets of issues... usually people don't write reviews at all if the product is good, and complain only after it breaks (unless they're 'paid' for the review).
62% of ad revenue goes to publisher so there is a clear incentive to keep people outraged.<p><a href="https://ibb.co/k8F413r" rel="nofollow">https://ibb.co/k8F413r</a>
> Two months before the collapse of Bear Stearns, the first investment bank claimed by The Great Recession, The New York Times ran a story entitled, "Can banks self-regulate?" Clearly, the answer was no. Yet, in the face of new regulations that followed, the surviving big banks have grown bigger and more powerful than before. A similar situation may play out with big tech companies.<p>I turned skeptical when I read this plus the Upton Sinclair quote. Nothing about Amazon's marketplace or ad business or even fake reviews is even remotely close to the financial system pre-financial crisis. AAFG are not holding the bill for trillions in potential liabilities on highly leveraged positions in complex derivatives. They're operating a market that doesn't involve any credit whatsoever outside of payments. Seems like the author has something of an axe to grind rather than a rational assessment of the risk and problems.<p>I don't think it's <i>good</i> that this system is the way it is, but <i>caveat emptor</i> seems like a perfectly fine solution. I've become more skeptical about what I buy on Amazon, and I imagine most other consumers have done the same. If Amazon wants more business from me again, they can improve the quality of offerings.
As of the middle of 2019 Google continued to be inundated with fake business listings, some of them are outright scams and fraudsters who harm consumers. All of them are intended to harm local businesses by making them invisible compared to the fake listings. I have not heard of Google finding a solution to this problem.<p>Some specific fields, like dentistry, seems to be flooded with SEO that is meant to prevent price comparison research. I'm no expert in ad fraud but I suspect the most polluted categories are the ones with very high click-through revenue.<p>While there are many things Google gets right, including fighting SEO where revenue is not much at stake, they have obvious perverse incentives to ignore these problems as well as the way fake reviews contribute to these problems.
We need a review site linked to hard identity + purchase verification + ability to see all other reviews by that reviewer (how many things do they review, in what categories, and are they potentially biased? Also, for complex products, do they have any authoritative credentials that might make them subject matter experts?) + ability for other reviewers to review reviewers, sort of like a peer rating system...
We can criticise the regulators as not doing enough and complain that they lack resources, but the reality is, they don’t need to compete with (and beat) tech giants, they only need <i>teeth</i>. Ideally the regulator (FTC or whatever) would just write some sensible laws (e.g. no fake reviews or no lies in ads), then burden the tech giants themselves with enforcing these laws... then investigate not necessarily <i>non-compliance</i> (i.e. evidence of fake reviews), but also lack of process, i.e. the inability to detect <i>potential</i> fake reviews... and of course impose humongous fines (% of worldwide revenue, a la GDPR but actual fines, not just threats).
This is a failure of lack of regulation, as human nature is to go too far in order to understand how far they can go.<p>Therefore, some of us will always take it too far until we reach the wall. This wall cannot be built by ethics or morals or any "self-regulation". It needs to be externally built, and well-enforced.
It shocks me we don't have a place to read honest reviews.
Where professional reviews who get paid will test things and give an honest opinion, anonymously, so they won't be bribed, and you can go there to read what they say and see their rating.
> Machines aren’t going away, but they are learning from us - both our lies and our truths.<p>Respectfully, I disagree.<p>Programmers are responsible. Machines only follow the instructions humans tell it to follow.<p>Everyone who codes should really look at themselves in the mirror now and then.
what about the underlying currency system which depends <i>only</i> on everone's trust in it?<p>there's very little which keeps fiat money connected to reality...
Luckily products from well established companies are still free from fake reviews (on Amazon) by and large. As long as you avoid the hordes of 5 star products with very generic brand names that you have never heard of, you can still trust reviews to have some degree of accuracy.<p>Not to say that the suspiciously cheap product with near perfect reviews that always shows up at the top is always the wrong choice. I bought a knock off dremel for $20, and later ended up using it to cut quite a bit of 1.8in mild steel and it performed great. Only a little bit of smoking from the internals. On the other hand, I bought a cheap microphone from the same style of seller, and it was an unmitigated piece of garbage.