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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4039 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 26, 2023

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Interesting, thanks. I suppose I would have suggested that Amazon get rid of the top reviews option altogether then, if it doesn't actually work. But perhaps that would make the curious inquire after its disappearance and prompt more bad PR.

I also get the sense what you describe is a solvable problem. If shady incentivized reviews is such a pervasive problem, why not develop a trusted reviewer network using some kind of ML analytics? I write occasional reviews and I suspect it's very quite obvious based on the data and metadata that I'm a regular consumer and and part of organized crime or cottage industry of SAHMs.

Even now, half the reason I default to Amazon over say Walmart is that the former has a lot more reviews, and that's useful info. You'd think they'd invest far more in protecting this moat. Your suggestion to do product research off site makes sense but wouldn't apply to the purchasing behavior of 90+% of Amazon customers I bet.

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