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> Real followers and likes will follow, but let's be honest here: Who doesn't automatically trust a business that has 19K Twitter followers and a few good reviews out there?

For now. As more companies cheat the system, people will be less likely to trust them based on things like followers and reviews.

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Currently I don't trust the reviews of lots of physical businesses in my area. In my experience places with few reviews tend to be more reliable than those with many. My theory is that customers of physical businesses are more likely to leave reviews of negative experiences and that businesses respond with fake reviews. This is because there is a high 'activation energy' to making an online review of a place that you normally walk into and that only really angry customer bother. I tend to trust e.g. App store reviews more because the barrier to entry to leaving a review is lower so real positive reviews seem to happen more.

I find this sad.

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