I've been getting these suspicious posts from people claiming to be from Ukraine. They always use the same template. Seems suspicious; any idea what's going on?
> If you were to buy, say, a laptop, or a new washing machine... where would you go?
The Which magazine sounds like Consumer Reports, who purports to have no interest outside of the consumer's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports#Editorial_ind...
I wonder if the HN community has had positive / negative experiences with CR relating to this topic
I too share your logic behind placing more trust in sites that go in-depth and review across all the brands, as opposed to focusing extra attention in only one or a couple.
Regarding SEO blogs, I have seen a lot of "review rewrite" jobs posted on a freelancing site, indicating there is a market for this kind of devaluing behavior (worse than not adding value, this actually is a net-negative on society, where costs are externalized)
I think at the root of the problem is statistical ignorance, combined with confused morale judgment, along the lines of "but if we think X is effective, it would be wrong to withhold providing X for everyone equally!"
Interestingly, Amazon might have a secondary payoff here: they actually get some good ground truth (honest review data) since these reviews - at least the positive ones - aren't tainted by the same incentives.
Maybe there's a market for verified customer reviews of popular items - even ones that aren't big ticket. Consumer Reports might grow to cover additional items and perhaps develop a browser extension for subscribers who gain access to trusted reviews.
Should we conclude that Amazon does not have sufficient incentive to remove these fake reviews? Surely they could, when third-party sites easily detect them...
As a hockey player, I never understood why referees would point to each goal, calling out each goalie's existence before the game. This helps explain it.