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

(blog.truestar.pro)
406 points doppio19 | 1 comments | 01 Jul 25 20:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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dawnerd ◴[02 Jul 25 02:18 UTC] No.44439710[source]▶
Some company paid be 100 bucks to change my review to be positive so they sent the money via PayPal no problem then I changed the review to say they paid me to write a glowing review and of course Amazon ended up removing the review for being harmful to their customers
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colonial ◴[02 Jul 25 03:30 UTC] No.44440026[source]▶
Amazon is awful when it comes to striking down accusatory customer reviews.

Last year I (like a fool) purchased some chunky thru-hole MOSFETs on Amazon. Lo and behold, despite the datasheets promising a few amps with 3.3V at the gate, I only got a few milliamps. Obviously counterfeit - but no matter how hard I tried or how much indirection I employed, Amazon always took down my review warning others of this verifiable fact.

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aussieguy1234 ◴[02 Jul 25 04:07 UTC] No.44440161[source]▶
Amazon are becoming like AliExpress and Temu. They can always do it cheaper, but the quality is touch and go. Now with fake reviews it alot harder to tell what's good quality and what's not.
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nothercastle ◴[02 Jul 25 04:13 UTC] No.44440189[source]▶
I prefer eBay at least it’s cheaper and the sellers care about reputation
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consp ◴[02 Jul 25 07:55 UTC] No.44441174{3}[source]▶
With ebay the delivery time for small items is measured in months or >= 200% of the product cost, and you either have to deal with gsp and the shit delivery they use or with DHL's insanely costly customs clearance. Probably only worth it if you live in the US.
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1. alexandre_m ◴[02 Jul 25 13:15 UTC] No.44443341{4}[source]▶
If you buy from china, it’s going to take weeks. If you buy from US and live in Canada, you’re going to pay a lot of customs.

In 2007, I bought a used MacBook on Ebay for $870, with shipping it was about $900. That was back when the currency was on parity.

It arrived with $300 custom fees. I could have bought a new one at that price.