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97 points healsdata | 3 comments | | HN request time: 1.686s | source
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mrweasel ◴[] No.44376983[source]
Online reviews in general are pretty useless these days. We know that sites like Trustpilot will take down negative reviews if you pay them, Amazon reviews are mostly bots and some sites have weird incentives for users to write reviews.

E.g. take reviews of business on Google, there's no link to actual purchases, but you get a star and a "Local guide level 4" or something if you do enough reviews. A family member runs a consulting business, he has a 2-star review, the only review. It's not made by a customer, just some random dude. What it looks like is that this dude just walked around reviewing business after business, based on look of their office perhaps. He's not customer of ANY of them. So now multiple business are trying to have these negative reviews removed, Google doesn't give a shit, so what are these reviews actually worth?

Most people who write reviews aren't exactly the most mentally stable people either. If you're not getting something in return, most people won't write a review, that just leave the nut jobs.

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rendaw ◴[] No.44377478[source]
> Most people who write reviews aren't exactly the most mentally stable people either.

That's a wild claim!

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1. const_cast ◴[] No.44382503[source]
In my experience working as various fast food places as a youngen, nobody writes reviews for good service. Because reviews are all about state of mind and emotions. If you're happy, you go home happy and never think about it. If you're angry, you need to vent somewhere.
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2. illiac786 ◴[] No.44384880[source]
You’re saying all 5 stars reviews are fake?
3. debesyla ◴[] No.44385494[source]
Unless it was unexpectedly good. Sometimes I rush to write a 5 star review if a random restaurant in middle of nowhere exceeds my expectations - so more people would know of the place.

In my scale 3/5 is good (got what expected), 4/5 is very good (nice bargain), 5/5 is uniquely amazing. But I do understand that for some anything below 5/5 is bad.