Following Amazon suing the admins of more than 10,000 Facebook groups over an alleged co-ordinated fake reviews campaign, we look at how to spot fake reviews and dubious ratings on Amazon.

Why Use Fake Reviews? 

On the site of one of the world’s largest retailers and the top online marketplace, large numbers of positive reviews and five-star ratings can give sellers a competitive edge that brings in greater profits.  Those who write the reviews on behalf of sellers can receive benefits like money, refunds, and free products.

How Big Is The Problem? 

Only Amazon has that data for the true scale of the problem, however, fraudulent-review-detection service Fakespot suggests that around 42 percent of 720 million Amazon reviews assessed in 2020 were fake.

Damaging 

Fake reviews can be damaging to buyers, other sellers, and Amazon’s platform. For example, fake reviews:

– Promote products to the top of the list which may not best match the customers’ needs and may not be the best quality or value for money. This can lead to buyers purchasing low-quality products that leads to dissatisfaction.

– Can mean that Amazon retailers who are selling a higher quality product have greater difficulty standing out among competitors with falsely positive reviews, thereby hitting their revenue.

– Lead to some retailers being negatively affected when some competitors post fake negative reviews about their products.

Common Ways To Spot Fake Reviews and Dubious Ratings 

Common ways to spot possible dubious ratings and fake reviews include:

– Look at the percentage of 1- to 5-star reviews. If a listing shows hundreds or thousands of reviews with only five-star reviews, or if, say, 70 per cent of the reviews are 4 or 5 stars, and only 30 per cent are 1-star reviews, this is an unusual pattern, and one to be wary of. If a product only has 5-star reviews, this could be suspicious.

– Vague reviews, e.g. just using short comments like “Love it!” or “Great” could be a sign that they are fake.

– Beware reviews that mention a competing brand or product and warn you not to spend money on it.

– Study the negative reviews and filter the reviews by 1-star ratings. If there appears to be a common pattern, e.g. reviewers repeatedly reporting deficiencies in the product, this could be a sign that all is not as it should be.

– Beware ‘merged reviews.’ This is where there are multiple variations of a products, and a seller may have merged the listings together, manipulating the review to make it seem as though there are more good ratings on the product that is being sold than it has. This means that many of the ratings for a product may be for one that’s totally unrelated. By reading several of the reviews, this can often reveal which product the reviews are about.

– Check the pattern of ratings. If there are substantial amounts of ratings at different ends of the scale – highly positive and highly negative – with nothing in between, this polarisation about a product could be sign of fake reviews.

– Read and search comments for any mentions or comments about the buyer receiving a gift card or a free product in exchange. This could be a sign that sellers have been incentivising customers who have bought their products, e.g. by using inserts for a gift card or a free product in exchange for a good review.

– Check the dates of when reviews were posted. If many were posted in a short time period, this could be a sign that there was a push for reviews on Facebook groups or other platforms.

Using Third-Party Websites and Browser Extensions 

There are several websites and browser extensions that can be used to identify fake amazon reviews. These include:

– Reviewmeta. Users can paste the Amazon product page URL into a search box to analyse the users’ reviews.

– Fakespot. This is a browser extension that can be used to spot fake reviews on a variety of websites, including Amazon and eBay.

– The Review Index. Like Reviewmeta, this analysis tool works by copying and pasting the product link into the search bar.

What Is Amazon Doing About Fake Reviews? 

In addition to suing the admins of more than 10,000 Facebook groups, other measures that Amazon has taken to tackle fake reviews and dubious ratings include:

– Banning paid-for reviews that are outside of its Vine program.

– Introducing a ‘disclosure’ informing customers when a reviewer has been incentivised.

– Restricting eligibility to review a product to customers who have spent at least £40 on the site within the last 12 months.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Fake reviews and dubious star ratings appear to be quite difficult for Amazon to stop, thus it is a problem that has grown following the pandemic years as some third-party sellers tried to get a get a competitive edge and cash-in on the surge in online shopping that the pandemic created. Clearly, it’s still possible for many people (if Amazon’s suing 1000+ Facebook Groups) to find ways to manipulate the ratings. It may be difficult in the short term to detect and stop practices like including inserts with products offering incentives for good reviews (unless they’re reported or mentioned online) or using merged reviews. Manipulation and fake reviews, however, are unfair, but are still rewarded by Amazon which is why they are still happening. In addition to making it more difficult for sellers who are operating honestly, plus affecting customers who may be buying inferior products due to fake reviews, criticism about the matter is damaging for Amazon’s reputation. Clearly, users of the platform (both sellers and buyers) would welcome the introduction of more and better measures to filter out and prevent fake reviews and ratings. In the meantime, as buyers, we can only continue looking out for the signs mentioned in this article, and perhaps consider using websites like Reviewmeta if the purchase is an important one.

A 1976 Apple-1 prototype, believed to have been owned by Steve Jobs and hand-soldered by Steve Wozniak is being auctioned and is expected to fetch around $500,000.

At $400,000+ Already! 

The prototype is essentially a broken circuit board with a crack in it but at the time writing this, after 19 bids and with the auction not due to end until 18 August, it has already reached $407,029. An Apple-1 without the same significant back story sold at Bonhams in 2014 for $905,000!

Used To Secure Apple’s First Big Order 

RR Auction®, where prototype is being sold, says that the prototype, believed to have been made for $40 was used “to demonstrate the Apple-1 to Paul Terrell, owner of The Byte Shop in Mountain View, California, one of the first personal computer stores in the world. The demo resulted in Apple Computer’s first big order and changed the course of the company.” 

Rare, Early, and Historic 

The auction website, which describes the prototype, which spent many years on the ‘Apple Garage’ property as being “rare, early” and “historic.” The auction website also describes the sources of the value of the broken circuit board as the fact that it is “entwined in the folklore of American business,” and that it is the “perfect embodiment of the symbiosis between Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Silicon Valley.” The RR Auction® website says this is because “without Wozniak, Jobs had no product” and “without this prototype, and without Paul Terrell, the Apple-1 might have been just another computer kit”. 

Early Personal Computers – Now Valuable Historic Artifacts 

There is now a lucrative market for what are considered vintage PCs that were part of a revolution that led to technology and tech devices playing an important role in most peoples’ daily lives. Examples of such items that are sought after and their estimated values include:

– Apple II (1977), between five and six million units sold, and it is estimated that one could fetch up to $10,000.

– Apple Lisa (1983). It is believed that there are only 30 to 100 still in existence. One fetched $50,017 back in 2017.

– A Macintosh 128K (1984) could fetch at auction between $1,500 and $2,000.

– A PDP-8, made by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1960s, could fetch an estimated $5,000 to $50,000.

– A Xerox Alto (1973) cost up to $100,000 then, but today could fetch $20,000 and upwards.

– A Commodore’PET 2001’could now fetch $500.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Apple has grown from its first base in a Los Altos garage in California to becoming a global sensation worth approaching $3 trillion that is part of the folklore of American business, and part of a new technological revolution that has changed everything. This, and the fact that this particular Apple-1 prototype was part of Apple’s incredible story are what make this modern-day artifact so valuable. Apple products have always been more than simply electronics to many of their owners, some of whom have a raving-fan attitude towards their devices, and this may also be a factor that boosts the value. This sale and the publicity around it are also reminders that we are now in the third (some say the fourth) industrial revolution and that the early pioneers, from only a few decades ago, have become heroes to some, and their early ‘works’ and artifacts are valued accordingly. Items such as this circuit board are also a kind of tangible proof of the mythology and stories that have grown up around the original Silicon Valley pioneers as well as providing a point against which to measure the astonishing of growth and progress of technology over such a short space of time.

A new Oxford University study involving 38,935 video-game players overs six weeks has concluded that there is little to no evidence for a causal connection between game play and well-being.

Why Do We Believe Spending Time Playing Video / Online Games Is Bad For Us? 

A combination of previous research, social judgements, anecdotal evidence, online and media comments, and health advice have all contributed to a general view that spending long periods of time playing games is bad and perhaps dangerous for a person.

Just Some of the research that has pointed to negative consequences include:

– A 2011 study by Ferguson, C. J., Coulson, M., and Barnett, J. (2011), ‘A meta-analysis of pathological gaming prevalence and comorbidity with mental health, academic and social problems’. This research highlighted how addictive video game use was related to traits like low self-esteem and low self-efficacy.

– A 2011 study by Mentzoni RA, Brunborg GS, Molde H, Myrseth H, Skouverøe KJM, Hetland J, Pallesen S. 2011. ‘Problematic video game use: estimated prevalence and associations with mental and physical health.’

– A 2016 study by Andreassen CS, Billieux J, Griffiths MD, Kuss DJ, Demetrovics Z, Mazzoni E, Pallesen S. 2016. ‘The relationship between addictive use of social media and video games and symptoms of psychiatric disorders.’

– More recently, the 2021 study by Masur PK. ‘Digital communication effects on loneliness and life satisfaction’.

In summary, many of the negative key points about video gaming / excessive video gaming include:

– It causes poor mental health, e.g. depression and anxiety. This, for example, was behind China’s decision to limit young people’s game play to one hour per day.

– Video gaming displaces face-to-face interaction (displacement hypothesis), leading to relationship problems and negative effects on well-being.

– Spending too much time playing games can result in a lack of real-life friends and loneliness, decreased academic achievement, stress, and maladaptive coping.

– Using video games may become a way to avoid doing other, more important real-life things.

– Playing video games may contribute to low motivation and social disconnection.

– Violent video games possibly leading to aggressive thoughts and behaviour.

– The negative effects of a lack of physical activity while playing video games. These can include weight gain or obesity, leading to heart problems, muscle loss, stiff joints, and poor posture.

– Poor sleep from playing games late into the night.

– Dehydration and exhaustion from not paying attention to physical needs while prioritising games.

Positive Aspects of Gaming 

There are, however, many positive aspects of spending time playing video games / gaming, some of which have been identified by research, but which have not broken through the prevailing negative narrative. For example, these include:

– Improving focus, multitasking, and working memory.

– Enjoyment of social interaction, and competition.

– Helping with relaxation and recharging and providing healthy escapism.

– Helping people to try out different social roles, and experience power in a safe environment.

– Helping people to develop skills relating better co-operation and strategic thinking.

The New Research Findings 

The new Oxford University study (by Matti Vuorre, Niklas Johannes, Kristoffer Magnusson and Andrew K. Przybylski), highlighted the lack of adequate supporting data for the narrative that spending more time playing video games is simply bad for people. The researchers found that there is “little to no evidence for a causal connection between game play and well-being” and that “current evidence does not meet these criteria and tells us little about the causal links between video games and well-being”. The researchers also noted that, based on their results, “the average effects of time spent playing video games on players’ well-being are probably very small.” 

The Role of Motivational Experiences 

In addition to looking at time spent playing games and the effects on well-being, the researchers in the Oxford University study also looked at the roles of motivational experiences during play in players’ subsequent well-being. It was discovered that motivations play a role in players’ well-being i.e., motivational quality of video game play was reliably linked to player well-being.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

This research is believed to be the largest-ever survey of gamers. This, in addition to the credible source (Oxford University) and the positive conclusions about video game playing have made it newsworthy. A few of the key points underpinning the reasons for the research also increase the value of its results, e.g. a lack of real evidence of any real causal links between game playing and well-being in previous research (and yet, policy decisions have been made on the strength of it), and vastly different approaches to investigating the effects of games in the past giving a skewed view. This research used games seven global game publishers who, along with other game publishers are likely to very pleased that there is now a highly credible piece of research showing that use of their products can’t really be linked to the well-being of their customers. This could help the image of the whole industry and could facilitate a focus on the more positive results of playing games, as well as alleviating the concerns of parents and other stakeholders. We now live in a society where (particularly young) people may spend a lot of their time at home on devices, meeting through technology rather than face-to-face, something that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Also, with the coming of the ‘metaverse’, this could increase the amount of time that young people could be spending concentrating elsewhere, rather than within the physical world. The research, however, shows that, other than perhaps a lack of physical exercise and real face-to-face interaction, gaming may not be affecting the well-being of participants. The researchers have acknowledged that despite their more positive findings, it’s too early to pop the champagne corks just yet as further industry data is required to determine potential risks and supportive factors to health.

Google has announced that due to the need for more time to evaluate alternatives, it is delaying (by nine months) its plans to rid Chrome of third-party tracking cookies.

Third-Party Cookies 

A cookie is a piece of code (used for tracking) that takes the form of a small text file that is stored on the browser of someone who visits a website. A third-party cookie is created by a third-party, perhaps an advertiser, and is placed on a visitor’s computer when they visit your website and other websites. Its main purpose is to track a web user and gather data about their activities and preferences (e.g. websites they visit frequently, what they purchased online and what they show interest in). This enables the building of a visitor profile which, in turn, leads to them being shown ‘relevant’ targeted adverts.

Ridding Chrome of Third-Party Tracking Cookies 

Google announced first in 2020, and then in March 2021, that it would be removing third-party cookies from Chrome by phasing them out over two years before rendering them obsolete. The reasons for their removal included:

– Privacy concerns. For example, privacy campaign groups and others have challenged tech companies and advertisers over the years about privacy and tracking users. In November 2020, Big Brother Watch, Oxford University and UCL were among 38 signatories of an open letter to the UK charity sector asking them to look at how advertising companies are allowed to build profiles of users based on sensitive information gained from trackers in websites and the impact that cookie consent processes had on these trackers.

– Improved and new data privacy laws. The introduction of GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and others have meant that tech companies can no longer track everything that users do without permission and share that data with multiple other third parties as they wish.

– Other criticisms. For example, in January 2021, the UK Competition and Markets Authority started investigating whether restricting cookies on Chrome could help Google increase its dominance in the online ad industry.

– Other browsers restricting the use of third-party cookies, e.g. Safari (Apple), Mozilla’s Firefox (Mozilla) and Brave, thereby putting pressure on Google to do the same or risk looking bad.

Put Back Until 2024 

Google’s recent announcement confirms that they “now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024”, which is nine months later than was indicated in their March 2021 announcement.

Alternatives – Privacy Sandbox Technologies 

Google says the reason for the delay is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies because it is “expanding the testing windows for the Privacy Sandbox APIs before we disable third-party cookies in Chrome.” 

As part of Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative to collaborate with the ecosystem on developing privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies and other forms of cross-site tracking, it has released trial versions of a number of new Privacy Sandbox APIs in Chrome over the past several months for developers to test.

Google has previously described the Privacy Sandbox as “a new initiative to develop a set of open standards to fundamentally enhance privacy on the web” and “a secure environment for personalisation that also protects user privacy.”  The idea is to move all user data into the Google Chrome browser where it can be securely stored and processed so that it stays on the user’s device and is, therefore, making it compliant with privacy laws. The Privacy Sandbox may also include an algorithm to group people according to their common web browsing and thereby create ‘clusters’ of people (who can’t be directly identified) with similar interests. These clusters can then be targeted by adverts without affecting the privacy of the individuals in a cluster.

Expanded Testing of Privacy Sandbox APIs

Google says that although developers can already test the Privacy Sandbox APIs, “beginning in early August, the Privacy Sandbox trials will expand to millions of users globally, and we’ll gradually increase the trial population throughout the rest of the year and into 2023”. Google also says “by Q3 2023, we expect the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome. As developers adopt these APIs, we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024”.  

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For a couple of years now, Google has been saying that it’s going to phase out third-party cookies and the Privacy Sandbox initiative now appears to be the preferred replacement. This system should help Google to stay on the right side of privacy laws and may go some way towards keeping critics at bay. However, Google’s own Ad Manager data shows that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52 per cent on average. It is not surprising, therefore, that those most concerned about the change are likely to be the publishers and third-party ad platforms that are reliant on cookies for their revenue and for those who rely upon lots of data for their online advertising, pop-up ads, or a really focused audience-targeting strategy. The extra nine months for testing should buy Google more time to make sure that it (and the third-party ad platforms and publishers) can still make reasonable profits with the system and have something to work with that allows a realistic level of targeting and which enables Google’s ad system to stay well ahead of competitors.

Researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder have developed a net carbon neutral (or even carbon negative) method of producing Portland cement by substituting quarried limestone with limestone produced by microalgae.

The Problem With Traditional Portland Cement 

The problem with traditional Portland cement is that it is made by quarrying limestone in large quarries and burning it at high temperatures, thereby producing 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide every year! To make matters even worse Portland cement, the most popular kind of cement, also uses ground (quarried) limestone. The entire process not only produces massive amounts of damaging greenhouse gasses, but there is also the environmental impact of quarrying.

Idea Came From Snorkelling In A Coral Reef 

After visiting a coral reef on holiday in Thailand, the lead principal investigator of the University of Colorado researchers, Wil Srubar, noted how coral’s structure is grown from calcium carbonate, which is also the main component of limestone. This gave Scrubar the idea that limestone could be grown rather than quarried.

‘Biogenic Limestone’ – The Green And Sustainable The Replacement For Quarried Limestone 

The biogenic calcium produced in the lab by the University of Colorado researchers comes from coccolithophores, which are cloudy white microalgae. They are able to produce the largest amounts of new calcium carbonate on the planet at a much faster rate than coral. They do this by capturing and storing CO2 from the atmosphere in the form of calcium carbonate shells that form on their surface.

Can Be Cultivated Almost Anywhere 

Coccolithophores can live in cold, salt, and fresh waters which means they could be cultivated anywhere in the world, on land, or at sea.

Between 1 & 2 Million Pond Acres To Meet U.S. Cement Needs 

The researchers have calculated that cultivating the microalgae in 1 to 2 million acres of open ponds could supply all of the cement limestone needs for the whole of the United States. Although this sounds like a lot of space, it would only take up 0.5% of all land area in the U.S.

Other Commercially Valuable By-Products 

The microalgae also produce other commercially valuable by-products such as lipids, proteins, sugars, and carbohydrates. These could be used in the manufacture of e.g., biofuels, food, and cosmetics, and could help offset the cost of biogenic limestone production.

What Does This Mean For Your Organisation? 

A viable and sustainable way to not only remove 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year from what would have been burning limestone, as well as mass produced microalgae absorbing even more is an attractive prospect. It could also be a way to improve air quality, reduce the environmental damage caused by quarrying, and, if the price of biogenic limestone is right, increase equitable access to building materials around the world. There is some confidence among the researchers also that the biogenic limestone could be quickly and easily swapped with the quarried limestone without affecting the quality of the product. The fact that the microalgae also produce other useful by-products could be a factor in offsetting the cost of the process as well as reducing the carbon footprint on the other products that they go into.