![]() “They put a glowing 5-star review right in your face. “The way Amazon presents reviews to you is a form of hypnosis,” says Saoud Khalifah, who runs the fake review detection site, Fakespot. Zachary Crockett / The Hustle (Data via ReviewMeta)Īmazon understands this and capitalizes on it accordingly. Our leading indicator of quality - and our guiding light of trust - are the stars. With e-commerce, we can’t see products in person before we buy them. Some 82% of American adults check product reviews before making a purchase - but the way we evaluate these reviews and determine the trustworthiness of a product is alarmingly simplistic: Research shows that we’re more swayed by a simple star rating than what reviewers actually write. ![]() This question sent me hurtling through Amazon’s massive fake-review economy - a journey that included private Facebook bazaars, thousands of fraudulent sellers from Tianjin to Tennessee, and an encounter with a morally righteous bodybuilder who is trying to deadlift a broken system.Īt a time when faith in our government, media, and even the very foundations of American democracy are at an all-time low, 65% of us trust online reviews. I looked up her product on Amazon: It was one of the highest-ranked iPhone chargers, touting 3,971 5-star reviews and a trusted “Amazon’s Choice” label. “No,” she responded, with a smiley face emoji. She’d courted me with an offer: If I gave her phone charger a 5-star review, she would refund the purchase via PayPal and send me a $10 “commission.” ![]() I was chatting with Lien Xi, an Amazon seller from Guangzhou, China, I’d met several minutes before in a private Facebook group. “Isn’t this illegal?” I found myself typing one Tuesday night at 1:15 AM. ![]()
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