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Corporate astroturfing is the norm (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Went to Google Play to complain about Hulu. I noticed Google advertising that over 300 reviews had the verbatim quote "watch and movies that you love". It's always confusing that buggy corporate apps have >95% 5 star reviews until you see that the majority are just completely fake, and no one cares or is doing anything about it.

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[-] Godort@lemm.ee 75 points 5 months ago

The only use reviews have is to make sure that the app youre downloading is most likely the original and not a malicious lookalike.

Artificial content has poisoned the web to the point that adding "reddit" to the end of google searches so that you could get real human content was commonplace.

I miss the days where you had to learn HTML if you wanted to share your opinions online.

[-] dan@upvote.au 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

adding "reddit" to the end of google search

As if there's no astroturfing on Reddit :) there's plenty of companies in the comments there, posts promoting particular brands or products that get to the front page, etc.

[-] Godort@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

Its especially bad these days to the point where im not even sure how to find good results anymore, but 5 years ago things were much better (or at least astroturfing was way less common).

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 70 points 5 months ago

It's only a bandaid over a gaping wound, but check out Fakespot, an extension for Firefox and Chrome. It won't help with google play, but when browsing Amazon, BestBuy, or other retailers they use machine learning to detect duplicate/repetitive reviews, and go into reviewers' history to determine if they are trustworthy.

I've seen a lot of "5 star products" get an adjusted rating of <2 because of this extension.

[-] breakingcups@lemmy.world 53 points 5 months ago

I have an axe to grind with fakespot. My wife has a tiny business and is one of the most honest and sweet people I know. She would never pay for fake reviews and she wouldn't even have the knowledge on how to do so. Someone (not even us, mind you) posted a link to her product on Reddit and a Fakespot robot instantly called her out for supposedly having suspicious reviews, even though each and every order (and thus each and every review resulting from that) was legit. Her product was then mocked and all it did was give my wife stress.

So yeah, take them with a grain of salt. They are probably pretty good on average but some innocent people get caught in it as collateral damage.

[-] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 10 points 5 months ago

Now you need to link your wife's product.

[-] Usually_Lurker@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

I also choose this guy’s wife’s product.

[-] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 5 points 5 months ago

I think a link to Lemmy should make a store's trustedness go way up

[-] Summzashi@lemmy.one 2 points 5 months ago

I use his wives product every day and it worked great everything got bigger and it got rid of it!!!

[-] tomi000@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Awesome suggestion. I will check that out right away. Thanks a lot

[-] DecentM@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago

Ngl this looks like astroturfing to me too

[-] tomi000@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Haha I see what you mean. If it works as suggested that would actually help me out a lot though, thats why I got excited. There are certain types of products where I know from the start that 99% of the reviews are fake. There cant be 50.000 people buying the exact same model of screen protector for my noname phonethat not even 50k people own.

[-] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 months ago

Sometimes I've noticed that a seller will repurpose the product page for a previously seemingly legitimate product with good reviews to sell something entirely unrelated while benefiting from the positive reviews of the prior product.

[-] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 50 points 5 months ago

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Goodhart's law

Advertisers made it a target to have a high review score so now they are just another advertising cost.

SEO did the same to the web.

Bots and now AI are infecting social spaces as users figured out reviews are now shit and would turn to special interest groups.

[-] tomi000@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Same applies to youtube algorithm

[-] Chocrates@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

I agree with you, but look where the money is at. Google and Amazon and the rest want to take a cut of the money you give these apps and goods. It loses them money if they police these things.

That's why strong regulation can be a good thing, keep the capitalists in check at least a tiny bit.

[-] kamenlady@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Not if the entity that was supposed to enforce the regulation gets enough "incentive", in order to look the other way. Some corporations are becoming so powerful ( rich ), that they can offer an amount that surpasses any moral and ethics barrier.

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

I'm absolutely sick of corporate astroturfing. That's why I use Crelm toothpaste, with the miracle indredient Frauduline.

[-] Audacious@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago

I see this on all platforms, even steam. Only the negative reviews are culled and labelled 'review bombing' by the corpos.

[-] snownyte@kbin.social 7 points 5 months ago

There are people who are hired specifically to pad reviews. They're easy to spot though. Every 5 star review reads exactly the same even if it's different wording.

"This app changed my life!"

"I was looking for so long to have an app like this so I'm happy this app exists!"

"This app is so easy to use and install, I don't understand why people are complaining about it"

If you want true honesty, read some of the 3 star reviews and below.

[-] dan@upvote.au 1 points 5 months ago

If you want true honesty, read some of the 3 star reviews and below.

There are a lot of one star reviews that are astroturfing too (e.g. companies paying for negative reviews of competitors).

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

"This one has good reviews."

"Wait a minute, How good?"

this post was submitted on 18 May 2024

213 points (98.6% liked)

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