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Comment by harel | Hacker News Reader

I now look first at 3 star reviews. These are less likely to be biased and more likely to represent a middle ground between the good and bad aspects of the product. It's sad that we had to get there but the trust is gone with 4-5 star reviews for me.

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Something strange I’ve seen on more than one occasion and on multiple platforms is 1-star glowing reviews and 5-star bashing reviews.

Also, when looking at overall reviews for a given thing there is usually a pattern for fraudulent ones, kind of like students having to summarise from the same text.

I've noticed this is particularly common on the Google Play store. Apparently the reason is reviews which go against what most people are reviewing are given a higher priority and more likely to be shown to potential users.

E.g. if an app is getting mostly 5 stars and you give it a 1 star, your rating will be more prominently shown in Google Play.

This kind of bi-modal distribution usually means one of three things. Most often it means the product is crap (Sturgeon's Law: 99% of everything is crap) and the vendor has been buying or posting fake five-star reviews. Occasionally it means the product is really good and a competitor has been buying or posting fake one-star reviews. Even more rarely, it means that the vendor and a competitor are both participating in a fake-review war. You could try looking at both sets of reviews to determine which scenario it is, but the odds are heavily stacked against it being the one that suggests a buy. As galling as it might be to let the miscreants win if that's the case, and to miss out on what's actually a good product, the safe bet is just to move on.

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