Reviews Are Worth Their Weight in Gold
In the world of e-commerce, reviews are the best sign of success or failure. Sure, a batch of good reviews shows that a product has sold well and that people enjoy it, but it’s more than just that. Reviews are the ultimate form of advertising.
And while exposure doesn’t guarantee sales, good reviews do. According to a BrightLocal study, 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust friends. That’s an incredible statistic because it suggests that a poorly written 50-word review by a stranger can hold as much clout as a positive recommendation from someone that you trust. Essentially, the exposure and clout that businesses get from good reviews create a powerful e-commerce formula.
In some ways, this formula feels a little too easy. But it actually creates a highly competitive marketplace that’s easy to exploit. Well-reviewed businesses can easily overshadow competitors, and products or pages with bad reviews are hidden from customers by website algorithms.
You’ve probably realized where this is going. Businesses need good reviews to stay afloat, so they pay people to write fake reviews.
Who Writes These Fake Reviews Anyway?
But, like other forms of online policing, fake-review takedowns are done manually. Usually, a website will simply target reviews that look “inauthentic.” Yelp, for example, tends to take down poorly written reviews by inactive accounts, or accounts that are clearly run by a bot. The website also uses IP addresses to find suspicious reviews. If a restaurant in Idaho has 15 Yelp reviews from an Australian IP address, you can assume that there’s some fraud going on.
Keep in mind that a lot of businesses actually hire fake reviewers through a marketing company, so an intermediary may be involved.
Freelance Websites Facilitate Fake Reviews
These freelance websites aren’t lawless wastelands. They have rules, they have moderators, and they’re totally above board. But oddly enough, fake review jobs don’t always violate the terms of service on some of these websites.
Upwork, the largest freelance job board, doesn’t explicitly mention fake reviews in its terms of service. Instead, the website’s terms of service outlaws “illegal activity,” and jobs that violate the “terms of service of another service, product or website.”
Well, there’s a bit of a loophole. If job listers keep their business vague, they can hire employees for just about anything. Need an example? I searched “Yelp” on Upwork, and I found a job that makes a vague request for “experienced Yelp users.” This specific employer is looking for 65 writers and wants to pay them $2 each. It’s a painfully obvious fake review job, and it’s been posted for more than a week.
That sounds fine and dandy, but most businesses don’t want to give out their products in exchange for bad or lukewarm reviews. Businesses playing this game tell their prospective reviewers there’s extra compensation for good, detailed reviews.
The Fake Review System Also Exists on Social Media
Let’s focus on Reddit. If you aren’t familiar with Reddit, it’s basically a forum-based website that contains every niche community imaginable. There are subreddits dedicated to boat enthusiasts, MMORPG fans, fashion lovers, and PC nerds.
These communities, along with most other subreddits on Reddit, are tempting targets for a business. If a company that manufactures gaming keyboards manages to get their product to the top of Reddit’s PC Gaming forum, then they’re effectively advertising their brand to 1.2 million self-described PC gamers. Additionally, a well-disguised Reddit post by said keyboard company could look like a testimonial by a hardcore gamer. And, as we already know, 84% of people trust online reviews and testimonials as much as they trust their friends.
If you don’t believe that businesses use Reddit for marketing purposes, then Google “how to market on Reddit,” or “how to sell my product on Reddit.” You’ll run into some interesting guides, like Dreamgrow’s “How to Use Reddit in Your Product Marketing Strategy.” When a marketing guide has detailed sections like “Avoid Getting Banned,” and “Create a Profile That Feels Real,” you know that you’re dipping into the realm of unethical business practices.
The fake review e-commerce machine has found its way onto social media pages, and that’s kind of bizarre. It’s a sign that misleading and unethical business practices have permeated the web, and that businesses are desperate to retain market share in the online world.
Fake Reviews Take Advantage of the Snowball Effect
The snowball effect is an easy way to propel fresh, new content into popularity. It’s also an easy way to weed out bad content and bad products. But here’s the thing—it’s tough for a brand new product to get any reviews, even if a well-known company manufactures it. This snowball effect primarily rewards people who pay for fake reviews—or, in the case of Reddit, fake upvotes.
You Can Also Buy Bad Reviews if You’re Feeling Evil
Have you ever felt that weird sense of relief (or disappointment) after reading a negative product review? It’s like, you wanted to buy this thing, but you know that you’ve dodged a bullet because of a review. Well, maybe you didn’t dodge a bullet. Perhaps you were manipulated by a fake review.
These techniques are grossly unethical, and they reinforce the fake-review status quo. When a business falls victim to sabotage-by-fake-review, they have to bounce back quickly. Otherwise, they could go out of business. How can a business bounce back quickly? Well, it can pay writers to leave good product reviews!
Fake Reviews Are a Symptom of a Larger Problem
It’s easy to get caught up in the blame game. Fake reviews constitute a significant, unethical business with a lot of moving parts. But before you go pointing your finger at business owners, writers, marketing firms, freelance boards, or Jeff Bezos, consider the idea that fake reviews are a symptom of a larger problem.
E-commerce is all about exposure. You could call it exposure-commerce. A business is simply bound to fail if it can’t retain an online presence. Since most online exposure is directly related to algorithms like the snowball effect, business owners are forced to hit the ground running and to avoid making even the smallest of mistakes. And at this point, the ethical decision to avoid fake reviews could even be a fatal mistake for any business.
With the exposure-commerce infrastructure we have now, fake reviews are the status quo. Should we accept fraud as the norm? No, of course not. But, unless online platforms rethink the review-based business model, we’re going to keep seeing fake reviews.
