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Fakespot shuts down today after 9 years of detecting fake product reviews

(blog.truestar.pro)
406 points doppio19 | 3 comments | 01 Jul 25 20:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.774s | source
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dankwizard ◴[02 Jul 25 02:16 UTC] No.44439699[source]▶
It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up.

You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review.

You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE.

Then an expensive option I was suprised happened - I bought a Dyson clone vacuum cleaner off of Amazon. A few weeks later, the company emailed me and said 'We have a new model. Buy that one, leave a review, we'll refund the purchase'. So I did it. This happened about 10 more times in 2024. My outdoor shed is entirely stick vacuums.

Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience.

I think Fakespot would have difficulty with all 3 of these scenarios.

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1. timcobb ◴[02 Jul 25 11:50 UTC] No.44442564[source]▶
> I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience.

Why would you want 12 vacuums? What are you going to do with them? Isn't that a senseless amount of redundant objects to horde? Don't you want room for other things in your shed?

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2. AlienRobot ◴[02 Jul 25 12:56 UTC] No.44443181[source]▶
>Don't you want room for other things in your shed?

To be fair, it's vacuum so it doesn't occupy space.

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3. immibis ◴[02 Jul 25 13:39 UTC] No.44443613[source]▶
But space is entirely occupied by vacuum.