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A harassment campaign on Goodreads

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270 points ilamont | 13 comments | 06 Jan 20 20:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.734s | source | bottom
1. jshevek ◴[06 Jan 20 21:54 UTC] No.21973815[source]▶
It's absurd that pre-release reviews are available to the general public. This should be easy to fix, if GR cared to do so.
replies(3): >>21973864 #>>21973924 #>>21975665 #
2. bduerst ◴[06 Jan 20 21:58 UTC] No.21973864[source]▶
Goodreads is owned by Amazon, who is incentivized by the pre-release purchases that these reviews drive. They're not going to put a lock on pre-release reviews (nor should they) to solve a trolling/bad actor issue.
replies(2): >>21973913 #>>21973971 #
3. Vrondi ◴[06 Jan 20 22:02 UTC] No.21973913[source]▶
This book is still in editing, though. It isn't even available as a pre-release review copy at all yet.
replies(1): >>21975668 #
4. halfcreative ◴[06 Jan 20 22:03 UTC] No.21973924[source]▶
Pre-release reviews is a problem on more than just books too. I wish there were more systems to verify that you've at least bought the book, movie, or the product in general before you can review it.
replies(1): >>21974378 #
5. halfcreative ◴[06 Jan 20 22:06 UTC] No.21973971[source]▶
Why shouldn't they? I think it's ridiculous to be able to review something which you have not experienced and I don't see a good reason why they should be allowed. The lockout should be until at least one person (ideally more) have experienced the fully released product.
replies(1): >>21975679 #
6. klez ◴[06 Jan 20 22:50 UTC] No.21974378[source]▶
How can I prove that if I borrowed it from a friend or a library?
replies(2): >>21974764 #>>21979126 #
7. jasondclinton ◴[06 Jan 20 23:31 UTC] No.21974764{3}[source]▶
A number of copy-protection systems for mid-80's to mid-90's computer games asked that you opened the printed manual that came with the game and go to—e.g.—page 32 and type in the first word of the third paragraph. Doesn't seem that hard to automate doing that for ebooks, these days. After all, Goodreads is owned by Amazon so they have the corpus. Just use chapters instead of pages; that will work across all formats.
replies(1): >>21975028 #
8. sarah180 ◴[06 Jan 20 23:59 UTC] No.21975028{4}[source]▶
I'm not sure that would help with organized brigading campaigns like this. In the Internet age, one person with the book could supply answers to these questions for hundreds of people posting fake reviews with only a nominal investment of time.
replies(1): >>21975184 #
9. djrogers ◴[07 Jan 20 00:17 UTC] No.21975184{5}[source]▶
If each prompt were unique (and given the number of pages and words in a book, they could be) then no - it wouldn't be a nominal investment of time to answer all of them.
10. thiagomgd ◴[07 Jan 20 01:12 UTC] No.21975665[source]▶
It's amazing how I see this problem everywhere, not only with books. On trakt.tv, all movies and shows that are for from being released already have ratings...
11. bduerst ◴[07 Jan 20 01:12 UTC] No.21975668{3}[source]▶
I mean, this is assuming that pre-release reviews are from advance copies, not WIP.
12. bduerst ◴[07 Jan 20 01:14 UTC] No.21975679{3}[source]▶
Authors and publishers ship pre-release advance copies to popular reviewers, as part a part of the promotion leading up to launch, like movies do with prescreenings. Goodreads is notorious for having these types of reviewers, in fact, it's one of the carrots that serial reviewers go after.
13. _carl_jung ◴[07 Jan 20 11:56 UTC] No.21979126{3}[source]▶
You have to answer a quiz