Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Protest reviews.
There are/have been entire campaigns where people "review" titles and give them the minimum 1 star rating "on principle" rather than on merit. There was one launched and maintained for months protesting DRM. Another, protested Amazon's 1984 fiasco.
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/1248
More common are protests over unusually high prices.
Amazon from time to time mines the reviews database and scrubs out protest reviews from clear campaigns but scattered protest reviews are often allowed simply because a critical consumer can see they are bogus and because over time they get drowned out by valid reviews. |
Exactly. It's easy to read the "protest" 1-star reviews and see why they are there and make your purchasing decision in an informed manner. Bogus reviews about the book's quality are more difficult to discern (although there are ways, they involve searching out the reviewers' other reviews individually), especially if they dominate the reviews.