Belkin caught using Amazon Mechanical Turk to post fake reviews for its products | Hacker News Reader

Belkin caught using Amazon Mechanical Turk to post fake reviews for its products

crunchgear.com

44 pointsvaksel22 comments

I don't trust Belkin products myself. A few years ago Belkin sold a router that would periodically override your web browsing and display an ad for parental control software in your browser instead:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-5104863.html

That said, it is good of palish to point out that this newest hasn't been 100% verified.

I used to think Belkin was good. I like the clean look and design of most of their products. Then, they pulled the stunt you mentioned above. Now, just when I think the moral decay has been flushed out over time, we get this new story.

They have become the Arthur Anderson of computer companies in my mind.

This would be an effective way to tarnish the reputation of a competitor.

I presume you mean: enter a job in mechanical turk to praise one's competitor's target, and then tip off a journalist?

Because otherwise, it's just dumb.

more like use Mechanical Turk to have 100 people leave negative comments on competitor product

That seems far more effective, since the vast majority of router buyers don't read any publication in which this story would run.

How about doing both? Hire 70 to write negative reviews, and 30 for positive. Tip off about the positive ones.

Clever thinking -- that's just evil.

That is a great idea. I'd try to get the negatives from some source other than Turk though, so they couldn't be found by someone searching for info about the positives.

You're hired. Any relation to this fellow? http://xkcd.com/125/

Just remember to use different accounts & language between the negative & positive reviews. Either way, be really careful to anonymize your tipoff, in case it backfires.

No relation. Just years of playing Diplomacy.

Why, palish, I recall a thread from yesterday in which you complained that you lacked the stuff to be a genius.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436390

I demand you recant, you evil genius, you. ;-)

this is done tons by big corporations. usually they pay a shop overseas to make accounts and post false praise. this is something i've looked extensibly into before, so when i get back tonight i'll go through my old notebooks and post some links.

That would be much appreciated

Apparently it is common for an author to create fake reviews for his book on Amazon. Ethically this is the pits. Somehow we need to evolve a reputation system so that we can trust reviews.

A side note: a while back Charles Stross (SF writer) had a thread on his blog where writers posted the best Amazon 1 start ratings of their books. The 1 star guys can get pretty creative.

I always look at the 1-star reviews first - they're often the most insightful:

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0262011530/ref=dp_top_c...

The only pro for this book is the wealth of information. The main con is that all of this wealth is presented in a haphazard way. I couldn't understand most of it. This text would be OK as an occasional reference, but nothing more. It is definitely overrated.

Just as an example, data directed programming, the way it is presented in the book, is counterintuitive. Operator overloading in C++ makes much more sense, even if its syntax is a little tougher than Scheme's.

And finally, what's with the jokes? When they mentioned Microshaft, I realized that the authors are just two immature jerks. Don't get this book.

Sometimes it's particularly fun to read clueless 1-star reviews of classic books. ISTR there was a 1-star review of Newton's Principia complaining that he bought to help him with his high school physics course and it was way too confusing.

It's very easy to write a gushing/glowing review of a product without exhibiting any first-hand knowledge of said product. It's much harder to write a negative review if you've never used the thing. So, yeah, I always look for the coherent 1/2-star reviews to get a real idea of what I'm purchasing.

Precisely why only those who have purchased the product from a site should be allowed to post reviews for it.

I know there would be less reviews left, but I'd rather know that the review I'm reading came from a real person who really bought the product.

I dont know, im naive enough to hope that a competitor wouldnt do this, at the same time I dont believe at belkin would do this in such an obvious manner.

It just doesn't make sense that anyone could be that stupid. It's not like it would be hard to get fake reviews written. Doing it in a way that makes it obvious what your doing would just be stupid.

Sometimes things are doing by misguided employees in the false assumption that they are helping. It's not the company that is doing the deed often but an overzealous employee who doesn't think of his/her actions. We experienced this with forum posting from a competitor. When we found and I talked with the owner he was as confused as me, but he phoned me back a few days later to say that he had tracked it down to an employee. He apologised and contacted the forums to remove the posts - I had a lot more respect for them after that. We're still competitors and fight hard, but fair, with one another

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