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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: 0.321s | 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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crazygringo ◴[02 Jul 25 12:58 UTC] No.44443202[source]▶
You can't use the word "counterfeit" or suggest that. But you can absolutely give 1 star and explain you only got milliamps. I have a bunch of 1 star reviews. I've never had anything taken down except when I used the word "counterfeit". Also, I get it -- how do you know if it's actually counterfeit, or genuine but low-quality? There are a bunch of things I've bought that I suspected were counterfeit, then went to my local store and discovered no, the authentic item is just crap.
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1. LorenPechtel ◴[02 Jul 25 20:17 UTC] No.44448336[source]▶
But sometimes you know it's counterfeit.

I've had one taken down. I pointed out the deception in the naming and that the product looked nothing like the real thing, nor did it fit. Only later did I realize they were selling it as "Genuine Beam", not that it was genuine "Beam"--I thought they were just making clear that it wasn't a knockoff. (Beam is the actual company name.)